


From Here to Eternity

by albatrost



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (okay technically friends to parents to lovers... maybe), Canon Divergence, Death, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Manga Spoilers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-07-08 08:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19866457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albatrost/pseuds/albatrost
Summary: It was a lesson she had been flirting with, spinning and winding about it the way she weaved between titans’ heads: how to swallow down that caged-beast fear and anger that welled within her when something threatened those she loved. How to suffer through necessary sacrifice, even as every fiber of her being rioted against it. How to let go.This was anything but letting go, and he knew that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been in my head for over half a year, and I'm so relieved/anxious to be getting the first chapter out?? This will be multi-chapter, and a fair bit is already mapped out, but I'm not sure exactly how long it'll be.
> 
> A quick note on canon compliance/divergence:
> 
> This fic was written so that it can be read as a canon-divergent continuation of the first two chapters of Der Tragödie erster Teil, if you want (if not, that's swell, too!). At the moment, everything up to the current manga chapter (SnK 118), i.e. the attack on Liberio, what's been revealed about Eren's questionable motives, the start of the final battle arc, is canon. I'm taking liberties in assuming the world still exists, Eren dies in the final battle, the nine titans still exist, and all of these other characters survive (lol).

When she first approached him on the topic, during a late dinner that they ate solemnly side by side, he had choked on his soup.

The mess hall was deserted, every table empty besides their own, but she still murmured the request out quietly, so soft that it was nearly drowned out by the lulling thrum of wood crickets outside. It had been a quiet day. They had hardly spoken with anyone at all, spare for the warm hands clapped on their shoulders and the tight-lipped glances of sympathy sent their way, because everyone remembered what day it was just as well as they did. Even their closest comrades had squeezed their hands, stumbled over words of comfort as best they could, before leaving the two of them alone. Both of them were grateful for it.

It was the anniversary of his death, a year to the day.

The silence, which had hung heavy and stagnant over their shoulders for hours, was splintered the moment Armin slapped his napkin to his mouth and doubled over the table in a fit of coughs. Seemingly undeterred, Mikasa lifted a hand to pat his back as he hacked and heaved. She doubted he could choke to death on broth—if the quick, shallow breaths he sucked down in between coughing soup out of his lungs were any indicator—so she just waited it out, hand smoothing slow circles over his shoulders. After another moment, his breathing steadied, and he wiped his face with his napkin.

“…Sorry,” he croaked out, throat raw, as he stared at his bowl of broth.

“No,” Mikasa mumbled after a moment. “I probably should have waited to ask until you were finished eating.”

 _I am now_ , he thought, gingerly setting his spoon on the table. His brows creased with worry as he turned her words over in his mind. The blonde sniffed, broth still stinging the inside of his nose, before tentatively turning to look at her. She was having trouble meeting his gaze, head bowed slightly and oil-black bangs obscuring her eyes.

“Mikasa…” he started, her name tumbling from his mouth before he could stop himself, but he realized he had no idea what to say. What _could_ he say to that? 

It would be easy—and no small insult to his dearest friend—to attribute all of this to grief, because both of them were still grieving, in their own complicated way, a year later, still raw and sore in places they had never been before. Still aching in ways that made their memories of splintered ribs and scorched skin feel as harmless as papercuts. Nowadays, those battlefield memories were dwelled on as fondly as papercuts, too—the ones they had gotten as children, tiny pudgy fingers rifling through the pages of Armin’s picture books, eager to learn and see and know. Those little hands drew back the second the flesh was split, stinging something awful. It had been the first taste of a lesson they had all come to learn too well. Ambition, discovery, truth—and their cost.

Nevertheless, he thought, at this point in their career, after all of the godforsaken carnage and slaughter that they’d endured in their brief lives, managing misery was an art all its own. Both of them had learned how early on. Grief wasn’t reason enough to brush off what she had said, and he owed her that much. The soldier who was all raw fervor and selfless selfishness, without an ounce of self-preservation—that wasn’t her now, though she bent and caved and thwacked back again like a bough in the breeze, always on the verge of tumbling back into her old ways. He had seen it, not for the last time, in the reckless and heartbroken abandon she had hurled herself into during the battle of Trost, the first time she thought she had lost Eren. He saw it in the way she had fallen from the skies, an offering laid beneath grotesque gods of death, resigned to her fate… and then something had changed. Some overwhelming, red-blooded, passionate desperation had swelled in her chest—the urge to live, to fight, to _win_ , exactly as Eren had always wanted for her—and she had carried on. Some tether snapped, and some heart-wrenching duty hoisted her up by the straps of her gear, and she had lived on to save more lives—that day, and ever since. It was a lesson she had been flirting with, spinning and winding about it the way she weaved between titans’ heads: how to swallow down that caged-beast fear and anger that welled within her when something threatened those she loved. How to suffer through necessary sacrifice, even as every fiber of her being rioted against it. How to let go.

This was anything but letting go, and he knew that.

“Have… have you really been thinking about this?” he managed, and what a terrible question it was. He was certain it didn’t come across well either, as if she would say such a thing on a whim, but it did the job.

She lifted her head and met his eyes then, somehow looking just as steely as she did solemn, before nodding firmly. It was every bit as earnest as he knew her to be. He stewed on her response, wondering if he ought to probe further, or cautiously ask how committed she was—more than anything, he found himself helplessly longing to ask _why_ , even though he already knew the answer.

It had evinced itself the moment they had locked eyes. The sad smile she looked at him with sometimes, ever since Eren’s death—and their hand in it—had devastated the both of them. As if she was counting down her own final days of frivolity and happiness, watching time whittle him down, staring at him like worn string about to snap. When Armin died, her last memories of her home, of any and all family she had ever known, would be laid to rest with him. This was feeling the normalcy she had taken for granted crumbling in her hands like ash, spilling through her fingers and billowing away in the wind like the cinders of Shiganshina itself. She hadn’t seen those smoldering ruins since they’d been swallowed up in the blaze beneath the heel of the Colossal—and they had reclaimed the land and rebuilt the villages, but the dirt paths she walked as a child were still buried beneath a film of ash, and the people she had spent her life loving were buried deeper still.

“...I still have eight years,” he blurted out, though his voice was barely a whisper, and he didn’t know if he meant it more as a reassurance or a dissuasion. Maybe both.

“That’s… less than a decade, Armin. Less than half your life,” she spoke levelly, but she had begun to worry her lip, looking at him as though she was urging him to understand something. Mikasa shook her head softly to clear it, and he could see her begin to become agitated. “It takes nine months, anyways. Almost a whole year. And sometimes, if things go wrong—” her throat clamped up, and she failed to finish the thought aloud. She didn’t have to. 

Both of them knew that medical complications weren’t rarities, and the odds weren’t always better after birth. Even with all the newfangled medical and technological advancements they were working towards, carting in from overseas, it still only took one bout of illness to snatch a vulnerable child away from this world.

 _Or a vulnerable mother_. The both of them had also borne witness to how many times Dr. Jäger had left to assist in a birth, only to return with a wordless grimace that spoke volumes. It was no small danger. The medicine was better now—and there were fewer deaths—but the risk was ever-present, and the mere thought of Mikasa suffering through any of that—at _his_ hands—

The gears clicked in her mind once she recognized that the fear painting Armin’s features was for her alone, and she reached to grasp his hand that rested on the table. “It’s alright… I’m strong—”

“‘Stronger than all of you’,” he recalled fondly, a worried smile gracing his lips, as he quoted her words. He remembered her standing on that rooftop in Trost, sword thrust into the air, hiding heartbreak and acting every bit a fearless leader after Armin had delivered the news of Eren’s death. His first death. How long ago that seemed, now.

Mikasa paused, before breathing out a soft laugh at his words. The atmosphere was easy once again between the two of them. It wasn’t necessarily enough to reassure Armin of her safety, or allow him to fully evaluate the gravity of what she was requesting—and they were so _young_. Sure, the more rural areas of Shiganshina boasted an abundance of teenagers with toddlers hoisted on their hips—but those were farmers, civilians. Family life was generally out of the question for soldiers in the survey corps—at least it had been, when their annual turnover rate was greater than half—and truthfully, the possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. The both of them had just turned twenty the previous winter—which didn’t seem like many at all, unless he counted the winters he had left—but before he could muse on that any longer, another thought crossed his mind, furrowed his brows.

Between all his time spent poring over military stratagems, struggling to read up on decades’ worth of science, smoothing his fingers across maps and flipping through history books about a world he never knew, he was definitely behind on the evolution of social customs in Hizuru. Mikasa would know, certainly—had spent the better part of the past year over there after the end of the war on a diplomacy mission. He had spent the same time abroad on permitted leave, traveling (albeit with conspicuous military protection) to see as many promised wonders of the world as he could. Although written correspondence took weeks at a time, he made sure to have a bundle of photographs to send her with each letter, and was always happy when an eager and detailed response arrived. 

He had learned from her letters about how she had finalized her dual citizenship—how she was finally reconnected with a land and people and culture that were her own, even if she’d never known them. He learned about the power she had been offered—whether or not her role would be merely as a figurehead—and about all of the galas, the nights she’d spent schmoozing with the wealthiest and most prominent families in all of Hizuru. About how her mother’s bloodline garnered all sorts of attention, and about how the publicly-acknowledged hope was that this bloodline—that the descendancy of their shogun—be continued. Preferably with a member of the Azumabito family, but she had joked dourly in the letters that any and all significant families were still staking their own bids on a marriage. On the prestige that would bring them.

“Mikasa… you know how important you are to Hizuru,” he thought out loud. “If you were to go through with this… it’d more than likely change your relationship with Kiyomi, and your social standing. You’d be… cutting yourself off from a lot of potential marriage alliances, probably.”

Additionally, the dishonor of fornication, he realized, was naught compared to the problem his own bloodline presented. It was one thing to bear a bastard child out of wedlock, but it was another thing entirely for that child to be an Eldian. To carry the blood of the devil in her womb.

If his words concerned Mikasa at all, she didn’t show it.

“An heir’s an heir,” she stated plainly, voice low, and glanced away sheepishly. “They’ll cope.”

It dawned on him slowly that maybe this granted Mikasa her own freedom, of a sort. He remembered the last couple letters she’d sent, before she returned dutifully to Paradis on the predetermined date specified by the commander—appreciative of all she’d experienced, and intending to return, but duller than she’d meant to sound about some of the prospects awaiting her. Subtly rife around the edges with homesickness, and unsubtly insistent that he make it back home the same week as she did.

She still had obligations to Hizuru, but _some_ obligations she had to the Azumabito family would be easily retracted on their behalf.

And because of their time apart, he realized that they had never truly dealt with, or talked about, Eren’s death. About what they had seen, that day. About the reverent horror of being at the mercy of the rumbling, at the mercy of the man they loved—a hair’s breadth away from reaching out and touching the end of the world. The end of all things. About how when the smoke cleared, and they stared at his corpse, soot and salt streaking their faces, it still felt like the end of all things. It felt a little too late to start talking about it now.

The raven-haired girl’s hand still rested over his own, lax but surprisingly light. When he still didn’t speak, the gears in his mind whirring away, she swallowed, before imploring him one last time. 

He didn’t flinch when her other hand clasped his cheek softly, even if it startled him.

“Please, Armin.” 

He met her eyes, gleaming dark and earnest and hurt, just as he had seen them when she was a doe-eyed child of barely ten years—and the last thing he needed to hear was her plea when they were both already so guilt-laden and sore-hearted, and the word split him open, carved him to the core—and he slowly draped an arm over her shoulders to pull her against him, felt her lean in to wrap her other arm around him tight. The warmth where their chests met was familiar. While Eren’s death had torn them open, plucking and peeling the strings of their hearts, it was soothed, even if only a little, once they were nestled against each other, those raw and festering wounds hidden away from the world and tucked together.

Armin dwelled on the two of them, and on the dining hall bench that once fit all three of them. He dwelled on who they had lost—or what had been left of him: the parts that didn’t ebb away along the paths, the pieces that hadn’t been molded alongside his aspirations by lifetimes’ worth of conflicting memory. He dwelled on how he had loved them—and what that love had made him become. He knew she dwelled on the same, as her fingers curled into his shirt.

Her voice was softer than the dusty flutter of moths’ wings, but he still heard it break over the shell of his ear. “I already lost you once.”

Breath hitching in his throat, he almost shook his head at himself—because of course she had. He had heard about how Mikasa—every bit the manifestation of rage, lit with a helpless fury that made Eren’s bloodthirst look laughable—had pressed her blade to the captain's throat, ready to kill for him. How she had all but howled as Hange caged her tight in her arms, holding her back from his scorched body. How she lowered her blades in resignation, tears streaking through the thin layer of ash on her face, and bit back that powerless anger—knowing there was a way out, and suffering through his sacrifice anyways. All of the guilt and blame and pain and emptiness twisting in her gut, until the moment she saw him rise again, in all the hideous and god-like glory of the titans.

Every time that he and Eren had been pried from death’s hands, cheating their fate over and over again, she had suffered for it—but it couldn’t be bargained with, anymore. And even if Eren hadn’t made it to the end of his promised lifetime, the titan’s curse had swallowed him up in its own way and was barreling toward Armin next, and no clever scheme or swift set of blades could spare him.

This was, at its very worst, desperation. This was holding onto the red, threadbare swath of fabric that still hung around her neck and watching the last strings unravel and spiral out of her grasp. She was asking him to father her child—to create a _human being_ —and even if this child would be loved and protected, even if it wouldn’t be used to fulfill an agenda like the Reiss lineage was, was it really any less selfish to bring a child into the world for this?

Blinking her eyes clear, she slowly drew away from him and made to stand up, as if suddenly aware of how late it was. “You don’t need to decide tonight,” she reassured softly. Even though she knew how fruitless sleep would be, she added, “We probably both need to rest.”

The blonde nodded, and she turned to leave but paused near the edge of the table, dawdling awkwardly. She cleared her throat, “If you do decide, some time, just, uh… just come by my room. I’ll probably be awake.”

She left hastily after that, a slight flush creeping up the nape of her neck, and that was something that Armin hadn’t thought about during their entire conversation: how she would end up pregnant to begin with. He was sure his flush was just as bad now, as he looked down at his soup bowl, the broth long gone cold.

  


* * *

A soft rapping of knuckles against the wood of her door caused her to stir. She blinked in confusion for a minute, before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. Despite the invitation, she still hadn’t really expected a visitor that night. Her heart fluttered like a bird trapped in the cage of her ribs, and she had to swallow around the pulse in her throat, gripped all at once with nervousness. She shook her head—for all she knew, he was only coming to tell her that he’d decided against it, and to try and persuade her otherwise. Briefly, she wondered whether she should have listened more to Armin’s earlier reservations—it was rare for him to be wrong, after all. But what could he have possibly thought of that she hadn’t? How could he change what she knew she wanted? She had long understood what was at stake if they went through with it, and what was at stake if they didn’t. 

She opened the door with trepidation, before quickly beckoning Armin inside. Shutting the door behind them, she stepped over to the bed, tread so light it was nearly inhuman, and sat on the edge. Armin hesitated in the middle of the room until she patted the spot next to her, and he walked over toward the bed.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she murmured, feeling the mattress dip as he settled beside her. It wasn’t a terribly adventurous guess. She had been hopelessly awake for the past few hours herself—counting the notches and crevices marbling the wood of the ceiling, trying to quiet her thoughts.

“Mm,” he shrugged noncommittally. “A little bit. I just keep waking up.”

She hummed in understanding. Her hands were clasped in her lap, and she had begun rubbing her thumb along her knuckles, pondering what to say—wondering if his visit had anything to do with her request and if it would be alright to push further, ask why he was—

“Is it… what you want, Mikasa?”

Instantly she turned to him, the stubborn ‘yes’ already forming on her lips, before he softly raised a hand and continued to speak. “All of it—and I don’t just mean the consequences, or the risk. Raising a child... even after I’m not… here, anymore, to help. Having that be part of the rest of your life. Is that what you really, _really_ want?”

It comforted her that even now, under the likely ludicrous situation she had proposed to him, that he still didn’t doubt her reasons or clarity of mind. That if it was what she wanted, her judgment would be trusted.

Beneath all of his reasonable reservation, he knew exactly what had carried him to her door that night, what had him tossing in sheets and tumbling in and out of shallow, fitful sleep. It was a deep-rooted fear which had only been stirred and sifted up by her earlier words—after all, his imminent death wasn’t something he dwelled on nearly as often as she must. And for the moment she still had some remnants of the 104th, had Jean and Connie, had the queen, commander, and captain on her side—but it wasn’t the same. They weren’t the ones who had taken her in. These people in the corps hadn’t built a home for her, not really. There was a time when she had _only_ had her parents—raised in isolation, ostracized by the world for their blood—and they were the first of many to be snatched away from her. Before Eren, and before him, she had been irrevocably and incontrovertibly alone.

And he had reached the gut-twisting realization that he wasn’t prepared to leave her alone again in this world, either. Whether or not feeling that way was good for either of them.

“It is,” she spoke with firm conviction. _More than anything_.

He thought about their dear friend Historia, about Eren and Zeke, about legacies swallowing up autonomies in one way or another—and in the midst of his thoughts, he decided that this was about love as much as loneliness. He thought about being born with the sole purpose of being loved—that, without a doubt, as Mikasa’s parents tucked themselves away from a world that loathed them—from a world they must have known wouldn’t be any easier on her—they must have had a similar purpose in mind for her. To be loved was a better reason to be born than most.

And even as his mind reeled, even as something in him screamed against it—that they needed to think, that they needed more time—that this idea was flawed in more ways than one, even as something stamped down on squealing and hissing brakes and begged against his traitorous tongue, he felt himself say, “Okay.”

Mikasa glanced up in his peripheral vision, seeming surprised. “…Okay?”

He met those obsidian eyes, saucer-plate wide in a sad and hopeful way that he felt all-too-acquainted with. And something twinged inside of him to see her that way again—and maybe he had seen it more than most. For her, for his best friend, anything.

“Yes.”

A few seconds passed as she blinked at him, as if she hadn’t actually expected this and was unsure how to react, before she lunged forward to sweep him up in a hug again. He lifted his arms to wrap around her, heard her mumble ‘thank you’ against his hair, almost indiscernibly. However, this whisper was drowned out by the rushing of blood in his ears. Because it wasn’t until they were entwined in each other’s arms again, feeling the warmth of each other’s chests and the beats of their hearts through only the thin fabric of their nightclothes, that Armin remembered what else saying ‘yes’ meant.

She drew back, looked at him somewhat expectantly—and all at once Armin felt far too hot in his nightshirt. The blonde tugged a little at the neckline—certain that his face was flushing, pulse starting to hammer anxiously in his throat—and he swallowed hard, mumbling out, “Is it alright if I—if I take this off—”

“Yeah,” Mikasa murmured softly, quick to nod. 

He reached back, clasping the shirt at the nape of his neck and tugging it gently over his head—mild relief washing over him when the cool air broke like the tide over his back. He felt the color leaving his cheeks—felt this immense nervousness, in his cold clarity, become something that he could begin to wrap his head around, to actually think about—and as he expected, he was better for it. What he didn’t expect was that Mikasa would follow suit, lifting her own nightgown over her head, left only in her underwear.

His throat was tight as he trained his eyes carefully on her face—didn’t look down, and didn’t know if she would want him to. Most of what was there he had seen before during training—the dips and curves and crevices of her strong body, the soft porcelain flesh and hard svelte muscle. His eyes hovered over her expression, and—though it was hardly a surprise—there was no embarrassment, no abashedness in her gaze. Above the quiet sadness they were both wading through, there was something trusting. Something curious. He realized her eyes were skimming over him briefly—over a body she knew well, one she had watched him build over the years. Muscles she had watched twist taut like cords of steel, rippling beneath the flesh as he trained, skin smoothing over them like freshwater pouring across river stones, as he grew stronger. And it felt like it had been centuries since they had been anything but soldiers, but she remembered that—remembered watching him fall behind, watching him pallid and sweat-drenched and worked half to death—remembered how he urged himself harder, strained himself past the snapping point, to catch up with them—all too well.

He took her lingering stare to be permission to look at her, too—and his eyes flickered down over her briefly—dwelled on what he hadn’t seen before, felt guilty for the interested stirring in his gut—before returning to her face. Tried hard to read those dark eyes, shadowed by thick lashes, those pale pink lips. And, like she’d always been, Mikasa was so, _so_ beautiful.

As reality sunk deeper and deeper into him, Armin didn’t know why he felt like he had to say something. It might be to clear the air, perhaps, or to function as a disclaimer—one he hoped very badly that he wouldn’t need—but the words tumbled up out of his throat before he could stop them.

A breath, and then, “I, uh, I’ve never—I’ve been with... someone, I just,” he stammered out carefully. “Not… not like this, before—”

“Yeah,” Mikasa nodded once in understanding, expression enigmatical. “I know.”

The certainty with which she delivered her words rattled Armin—and _of course_ she knew. It was a matter of how attuned she was to them, to him and Eren, as much as a matter of her astuteness. She knew what those clandestine looks and gestures had meant. She understood, just from watching Armin, that what Eren had done had broken his heart in a different way. She had been in close proximity, the first time, to the evidence of their liaisons—something which still had shame curling deep in his gut. Had probably realized shortly after, from Eren’s lingering, desperate touches, from the trips Armin would make to Eren’s room late at night, that it was something the two of them had kept doing. It was something they’d never said explicitly—something that twinged nervously inside him to have it acknowledged now, of all times. Of course she had known. She had known all along.

And this exposure was unnerving for more reasons than one—made his stomach twist with guilt as much as relief from her understanding. Because at some point, later on, he had figured out how she felt about Eren, too. Because he knew how she’d resigned herself, because of him, in the last years Eren had to live—in the last years they _had_ Eren, before he was hardly himself anymore. Knew that time was running out and she could only give so much and have so much of the man she loved. To the man they’d been willing to die for. Knew that it might be Armin’s fault. Even though no jealousy marred her features—even though, if anything, the crease of concern in her brow was _for_ Armin rather than because of him—guilt still prickled in his gut, rested heavily inside of him like a rod of iron.

She didn’t share anything similar to what Armin had confessed, and Armin found himself grateful for it, rife with bizarre remorse. If this was actually her first time, he was fine not knowing. He hoped it wasn’t.

Mikasa regarded him with some expression he couldn’t place. And somehow, that same contented closeness with Mikasa—one that had been a small comfort to him, for as long as he could remember—was enough. Enough to smother the nervousness that swelled up tight in his chest, meshed with an almost repentant hesitance. Enough for him to reach out and take her hand, curling his palm over the back of it and resting their twined fingers on her thigh, to lean over and rest his forehead against hers. She squeezed back tightly.

And even if this couldn’t _all_ be attributed to grief, Armin had to admit there _was_ some ache deep in their chests that was soothed the closer they were together—some raw, searing pain in both of them howling for touch, for comfort of any kind, something carnal and craven. Because beneath the emotional turbulence that roiled in their guts, beneath the restless pulse and mingling breaths, they both _understood_ —both felt the aftershocks of his death and the foreboding promise of Armin’s—in a way no one else ever could. And this petrifying agony somehow set them into motion, this deep and gut-wrenching _knowing_ —knowing how it felt to be ripped raw and open—knowing that maybe the other could dull this blistering pain, even if only for a moment. The temptation of knowing that maybe this desolate feeling could easily ebb away on each other’s fingertips, in the comfort of each other’s flesh, in sweat and salt and skin. Armin wasn’t thinking straight—didn’t know if he had been all day, wracked with Eren’s memory—staring down the end of his own life, a man condemned, as Mikasa’s fears soaked into him. But he saw, in perfect clarity—for only an instant, as his pulse thundered in his ears—just a glimpse of what Mikasa meant. What she wanted, in the time they had. And he found himself fervently and selfishly wanting the same thing.

Armin didn’t move to kiss her then, even if he wanted to, still unsure about where these boundaries started. Reminded himself that he wasn’t necessarily here because she wanted to sleep with him, but because she wanted to bear his children—and this distinction felt a lot more staggering than it probably was. It wasn’t something he had a lot of time to dwell on before Mikasa tentatively leaned forward—careful and slow, like fingertips skimming smooth over glassy water, cautious enough to hardly make a ripple—and closed the gap between them.

The heartbeat in the hand under his hammered harder than gunfire, but there was something so natural and seamless in the way she pressed her lips against his. And even in its trepidation, the kiss was firm, hard—some tangible pressure he could _feel_ , grapple onto—something sobering and unsaid and nearly painful threatening to break through to the surface. And he understood that, too. Kissed her back as if he was parched for it—lips tenderly curling over her own—relishing in the soft exhale against his cheek, where her nose was pressed. Host to some powerful, tight-chested, clenched-jaw urge he felt he couldn’t explain to her if he tried. Hoped he could show her.

Heartbeat loud in her ears, her lips enveloped his own—and Mikasa brought a hand up to cup his face. She didn’t realize it was shaking until it was clasped to his cheek. She gently sucked his bottom lip and let it go—experimentally, carefully let the tip of her tongue sweep across his parted lips. A soft, nervous thrill ran through her when she felt his own tongue delve past his lips—when the kiss deepened, mouths meshing together, tongues laving against each other. She stuttered out a breath, felt the soft sound that slipped out of her reverberate against his lips.

Mikasa shifted, pulled on the hand he had wrapped around hers—wanted to lay down, because _shit_ , her head was spinning—wanted to urge him down next to her, closer to her. He yielded for her easily, still locked in that breathless kiss. They settled higher on the bed, each on their side—and Mikasa shuddered when she felt his hand skirt up over the delicate skin of her throat, fingers brushing over the flesh so softly, to clasp the back of her neck. Something painfully reserved inside of her was fighting against something starved—and this reserved thing unraveled more and more the longer their bare flesh pressed flush together, like a knot of string inside her being eagerly plucked apart. 

And Armin was something familiar—the warm and soft smell of his skin and his hair, as she ran her fingers through those flaxen strands—even if this wasn’t. Despite every time she’d held him close, she hadn’t been acquainted with the hot feel of his flesh when his chest pressed bare to hers, or with how the soft hair on his legs tickled her skin when their thighs rubbed together. There was a lot she knew about Armin, intimately—and still, a lot she didn’t. A lot she _would_ know, soon, she realized, whether or not she had any right to. Her heart leapt into her throat at the thought.

Anticipation coiled in her belly, something akin to the breathless, swooping thrill of falling—and this inexplicable and overwhelming _feeling_ welled up fast in her chest, swelled so tight she felt it might burst, pushed tears at the corners of her eyes. And maybe she yearned for this closeness in part because it was a closeness she had yearned for with Eren—a chasm that only deepened with time. Yet even if she claimed this as the reason, there was still more desperation than she expected in how tightly she clasped Armin against her. More relief for this deep-chested ache than she predicted every time she met his lips. And she was overcome, fingers clasped messily and trembling against his cheek. Even if this love was different, distinct in her mind… it was still more love than she knew what to do with.

“If you change your mind—” Armin murmured out breathlessly, the words washing over her lips in between kisses, “at any point, all—all you have to do is say—”

“I know that, too,” she mumbled out against his mouth—a gentle reassurance, a smile ghosting at her lips.

She was still struggling to swallow down some sensation she couldn’t put into words—some deeply wrought and emotional thing threatening to claw its way out of her throat—and she felt his breathing grow harsher, ardent kisses growing messier. Felt some foreign excitement thrill through her, shiver down her spine at his eagerness—at the idea that he wanted her, too. That he _needed_ this, too.

Something twinged pleasurably in her gut as he pulled her closer, as his hands roamed searingly hot over her, one brushing over her neck while the other curled firm around her thigh. She sucked in a breath, heat building in her groin at the tender touch. She realized she could feel his cock pressed to her hip, the shape of it swelling ever-so-slightly against the fabric, radiating warmth—and that same curiosity was back with a vengeance, arousal curling anxiously in her gut. His hand brushed over the delicate skin of her neck, and the pads of his fingers grazed feather-light over her pulse point, evoking a sensitive shudder—and something pulsed eagerly deep inside her, all but ached between her legs. Mikasa lifted her thigh up over Armin’s hip, flexed her hips forward, hoping he would understand. His lips broke free of hers, and he drew back just far enough for his eyes to rake over her face—noses nudging together, peering at her under heavy lids and blonde lashes. He drank in her rose-smattered cheeks and parted lips, pink and wet and inviting—and it was something else entirely to see her undone in this way, something revelworthy and deeply unfamiliar, maybe undeserved. Something breathtaking.

The room was still swirling about him in his dizziness—pulse pounding through his chest loud enough to rattle his ribs—but seeing her face was somehow enough to tether him, steady him against this spinning frame. Because even in this uncharted territory, under the overwhelming weight of these feelings and of what they intended to do, this was still Mikasa. The person dearest to him, above all else. 

He smoothed a palm down over her lower stomach, felt the hitch in her breath. Knew she could probably feel his heartbeat hammering in his wrist as his fingertips inched closer to the hem of her underwear. Armin paused then—and he wanted it to be good for her, above all else—hoped he could at least give her that much, and that he wouldn’t be crossing a line. Mikasa rolled her hips upwards, grinding against his hand, and bit down hard on her lip. He supposed that was as close to permission as he could get.

His fingers slipped down over the fabric and between her thighs, and her eyes fluttered shut with a soft gasp. Armin’s own breathing was shaky as he stroked his fingers over her, teasingly light—felt her body buckle and her back arch weakly as he slid his fingers along her lips, feeling the delicious heat of her through the thin fabric. The soft noise that left her lips sent a hot jolt of liquid pleasure down his spine, jumped hard in his cock. He noticed how her muscles clenched taut, how she breathed out a whimper, each time his fingertips traced over one sensitive spot—and he let them dwell there, rubbing in slow, steady circles. Biting down on her lip to suppress a groan, Mikasa tossed her head back weakly, ground it into the pillow. And as he relished in her reactions, he realized, with some degree of embarrassment, that he was hard, the head of his cock nudging against her stomach. He swallowed down the shameful urge not to let her feel it, to draw back or pull away—because this was supposed to be the point, after all. She rocked against his motions, thrusting shallowly toward the pressure of his hand—a quiet, breathy moan leaving her lips when she pressed flush against his cock, felt the evidence of how badly he wanted her. His fingertips slipped further back occasionally when her hips rolled—and he could feel the dampness soaking into the fabric, felt a shudder run through him.

Armin’s hand traced back up over the front of her underwear—and her eyes peeled open at the loss, brow furrowing a bit—before it skirted beneath the fabric, fingertips brushing softly over fine, dark hair, drifting lower. She hissed through her teeth a little when he passed over her clit once again, bare this time—a small discomfort, pressure a bit too strong and fingertip a bit too dry. And that feeling he understood himself—mumbled out a quick “sorry” against her lips—carefully spread her flushed lips open and dipped his fingers shallowly into her wetness. Mikasa whimpered against his lips as she kissed him earnestly, spreading her thighs further apart, feeling them quiver. He swallowed hard as he slowly pulled his wet fingertips out and slipped them up over her clit again—and this sensitive touch did have her clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound she made, hips jerking. Pleasure throbbed deep inside her as his fingers laved wetly over her clit, slicked along her lips, dipped into her and curled—and his knuckles glistened wet as he softly, sweetly worked her open, as he stroked her closer to the edge. And the pressure coiling up in her groin, tingling inside her, only wound tighter as his fingers delved between her legs, slick and wet as they rubbed over the bump of her clit—to the point that it was nearly unbearable. Mikasa squirmed with every stroke—rubbed her head against the pillow, mussing and matting her black hair with sweat. Armin swallowed thickly as he watched her—his cock achingly hard—found himself enraptured by the feel of her. By that divine heat and wetness that made his knees weak. By how velvet-soft she felt when his fingers slipped inside of her, pressed and massaged into that sensitive spot. And there was something hauntingly surreal about all of that, as if he was waiting to wake up—and some nervousness still shook in his hands, made his motions clumsier than they had to be—wondered briefly if he should apologize for that too, even if she was still enjoying herself. Yet excitement thrilled through him just as much as fear, and arousal swelled so painfully hard in him that it was hard to focus on reservations—on anything. Not on the sore feelings or salted wounds that had swirled sickly in his mind all day—and maybe, in a gutless way, that was exactly the point.

Mikasa’s thighs trembled around him, and he could feel her clenching and twisting, arching toward and away from the overwhelming feeling. The quiet sounds loosed from her throat were rich with frustration and ecstasy—something maddening—and she was close, so close, but this wasn’t enough. Maybe it would be enough, another time, when Armin’s hands were more experienced and less tremulous. But as it was, she teetered on the edge, a hair’s breadth away from tipping into that blinding hot relief. Her hand snaked between them, then—grasped Armin through the front of his underwear. His hips jerked, and the blonde pressed his lips together to suppress a low moan as she gripped his cock. A pleased shudder ran through her as she felt the weight of it in her hand, the warmth and thickness of it through the fabric. She let out a shaky breath, stroked slowly along the length—drinking in his reaction with dark, lust-blown pupils, face difficult to read.

It was hard to say what the source of this desperation was—strained taut and breathless and needy with how close she was to coming—but some impatience welled up inside of her. Her hands slipped beneath the fabric, thumbs hooking in the waistband, and she tried to tug his underwear down over his hips—caught it accidentally on his erection, and watched his nose scrunch in discomfort, before he helped her take them off—trying hard to coach the self-conscious flush from his cheeks at feeling so exposed. And he returned the favor with just as much hunger and anticipation, rucking her underwear down over her thighs. They slipped down easily—smearing some glimmering wetness along the inside of her thigh as he dragged them over her legs—and she was quick to kick them off her ankles. And Mikasa was still rushing towards something, twining her arms around his neck, hands clammy as they grasped against his strong back—her thighs brushing together, squeezing tight when she felt the hot flesh of his bare cock pushing against her—and he couldn’t blame her for this impatience, because he knew both of them were desperately seeking out relief, physical and otherwise, in all the ways that they could. He climbed on top of her, some foreign feeling clamping up hard in his throat, some wordless, formless depth that he barely understood himself. She spread open for him, eyelashes fluttering, anticipation thrumming through her—and her gaze was enigmatical, rich with want and terse with smothered pain. Hopeful, in the strangest way.

Thighs quaking, she felt Armin lower himself between her legs. Mikasa’s breathing quickened when she felt the swollen head nudge gently against her. And Armin had paused again—because despite having his hand between her legs a moment prior—and as dizzying as that had been—this felt different, in a way he wasn’t exactly prepared to unpack. The adrenaline coursing through him, heavy on each breath, goaded him on—as did she, fingernails pinching into his shoulders, stomach arching off the bed—timid little undulations, speaking softly of her readiness. He wondered if the hesitation was plain on his face—if, in this ultimate candor, that worry for her was still knitting his brows—because she reached up to cup his face.

“Armin,” she breathed out, palm warm against his cheek. Even as her chest heaved, a soft and sincere smile graced her features. She felt like she was asking him as much as telling him when she whispered, “It’s alright, yeah?”

With a hard swallow, he nodded back at her. An acknowledgement as much as an answer. Heart palpitating heavy in the cage of his ribs, he pressed forwards, lowered his head next to hers—eased into her so slowly. Her jaw dropped open as he sunk into her, and she made a strangled sound that sounded vaguely like his name, again, her lips flush with his cheek. Once he was in her to the root, he felt her pulse hard around him, felt the throaty moan against his jaw—reveled in the blistering heat between their bodies. In the palm still wrapped to his face, in the exhilarated flush on her cheeks. Armin pulled out slowly again—and it was better that it was slow, for her. Better to feel the slow and sumptuous slide as he stretched her open deliciously, better to feel in exquisite detail how he slipped into her, squeezed past that tender spot inside of her. He rolled his hips agonizingly slowly, working her open so sweetly, taking her apart—trying to remember the last time he had felt anything like this, as she fell to pieces beneath him.

This felt like caving—as if they’d stopped warring and writhing against this heart-wrenching and fateful thing, against what had been tearing them apart all day, carving and cleaving meat from the marrow, cleaning them down to bare bones… and gave in, crumbling apart in the palms of each other’s hands. Urging and coaxing each other into this decay, snipping the strings from the seams and unraveling apart—spilling over at the edges across each other, into each other—until they both collapsed into dust. Decomposed into little else besides flesh and sweat, heat and hunger. 

And even if it had been years since he’d had Eren, it had been longer since he’d had him _like this_ —in such a raw and fervent and breathless way, in such a close way, a deeply-understood way. Something that felt closer than the limits of flesh itself. Remembered nights’ worth of familiar hands raking over his body as if they were a stranger’s—eyes he barely recognized glinting in the dark—still dreamt about them sometimes, and woke up unnerved, stomach twisting in arousal and fearful sweat cold on his skin. Often caught himself wishing for a fond memory of their shared years, instead, for a bit of denial to lean back into—for anything but this.

And he was bizarrely relieved to realize that he _hadn’t_ thought about Eren at all during this. Not once, as his lips meshed with hers, as her fingers gripped and grazed over his skin, as he slowly came undone—entirely enraptured with Mikasa. Thoughts and senses drowned out blissfully with her alone. Wondered, briefly, if she had been thinking of Eren—and it seemed unlikely, based on the breathless gasps of Armin’s name hot against his skin, based on how she struggled hard to keep her eyes open, even as she was wrought with pleasure—but he wouldn’t blame her if she had. Could never blame her for anything, in all of this. Couldn’t do much besides take solace in this cherished peace between himself and Mikasa, in the red-blooded, racing-heart manifestation of that peace.

And a part of that didn’t feel quite fair, either—because he was the one on top of Mikasa, while Eren was rotting six feet under. He was the one rutting into her, every thrust pushing their sweat-slicked bodies deeper into the sheets with all the devotion of a man digging his own grave. Found, with every soft, gratuitous cry, with every time she throbbed around him, pleasure building tight in her gut, that he didn’t care. Not the way he _should_. His anger was long-tempered, not even a lick of spite sparking at Eren’s betrayal anymore—but the guilt he expected to rile in his gut at laying with Mikasa was just as dull. And this should have scared him—maybe would have, another time, because he was reluctant to let go of the man he had loved, too—but he could feel her body clenching, tensing around him—felt her impending end coming on as strongly as he felt his own—and the thought was swept away.

And even though she was close before, the steady and slow pace he’d set had her unwinding, unfurling, untangling—had thrills coursing through her every time the blunt head pressed deliciously into that tender spot inside her—had pleasure trickling down her spine, tingling in between her legs, each time he pushed all the way in, his hips rolling flush to her clit—and that unmistakable feeling was surging up inside of her, surprising both of them. And the realization invigorated him, indulging in every building moan as he worked her up to the edge—grateful to be able to do this much for her—relishing in how desperately she squeezed around him, cock glistening wet as it slipped through those flushed lips. Starting low in her belly, tightening in her groin, pleasurable shocks began to course through her, swelling up slowly—and she was kicking and curling her toes and crying out—each pulse more deliciously intense than the last—until it was spilling over—

Mikasa slapped a hand over her mouth as a cry tore its way out of her throat, as she thrust her hips hard against him, pleasure coursing through her, so intense that it was nearly excruciating. Her nails all but sliced into Armin’s shoulder as her climax rippled through her, coursed blissfully through her veins—and she throbbed hard around him as she rocked her hips, riding out that feeling, shout tapering off into a low and broken moan. And Armin froze, had seemed genuinely concerned at first—because he had never heard her cry like that, even when she’d shattered a rib—but he relaxed the longer he soaked in her serene expression as she came back down. His hand softly caressed her face, thumbed dark strands of hair away from her cheeks, and he stared at her, something both deeply affectionate and deeply sobering in his gaze. 

Her eyes were shadowed by her lashes as she stared back at him—lips parted, cheeks brightly flushed—and it was difficult for him to tell exactly what that look meant, because despite all the times she’d held him in this devoted gaze, it was different than this. Less divinely cathartic, and open, and raw. And she was still throbbing around him, still gently rocking and pushing against him, and he realized that she was still yet to get what she wanted. That all the fitful, feverish pleasure in the world, even if it imbued her with the relief and closeness she’d been desperate for, was naught compared with this promise. A future, with a fragment of him, still beating-heart and breathing. 

He rolled his hips forward—felt her lurch, suck in a breath with a razor-sharp hiss—because the tender spot he pressed into felt like a knot of nerves, hypersensitive. And full shivers were still running through her body, trembling in her bones like ripples through water. He felt her brace herself against his arms as she shivered through the aftershocks, as he carefully started to speed up. Everytime he thrust into her wetness, into that rich heat that made his knees weak and his legs shake, he inched closer—was so close already from watching as she fell apart, from listening to the overwhelmed cries she muffled against the skin of his throat—the creaking of bedsprings and slapping of flesh echoing through the room—and a jolt of liquid pleasure curled in his gut as he felt his own end approaching, felt it swelling painfully hard in his cock and clenching in his stomach—

In the outside hall, a door creaked open, the squeal splitting through the silence—and Armin stilled abruptly, a shudder running through him. And in the midst of the tempest of roiling emotions that had been threatening to swallow them both down… it was fairly easy to forget that they were still in a military sleeping quarters. 

Armin swallowed and glanced at Mikasa in sheepish worry, and she stared back with a dire, wide-eyed gaze, cheeks still deep pink. And, as the gentle padding of feet traversing floorboards reached their ears, Armin tried to reassure himself that maybe they hadn’t been heard, and someone was just getting up to use the restroom—

“Uh, Mikasa, are you alright?” Connie’s familiar voice rang out, muffled by the heavy wooden door, sounding somewhat uncertain. “I thought I heard you yell, or something.”

Even though they both reasoned through it for a moment—supposed that, technically, they weren’t doing anything disallowed—the mortification of being caught didn’t benefit either of them. And he wasn’t sure if Mikasa wanted anyone to know about this—wasn’t sure what this arrangement _was_ , in all honesty, or what exactly was supposed to play out and who was supposed to know if she _did_ conceive—hadn’t even started thinking that far ahead—and figured she probably wanted everything to remain clandestine, for the moment. He was far more lightheaded than he’d realized— _so_ close that he worried moving at all would tip him over the edge, pulse beating hard between his legs, deep inside her—and he didn’t exactly trust _himself_ to keep quiet enough if that happened. And it was hard for him to tell what Mikasa was thinking, but she must have realized she had little time to respond without attracting attention, and blurted out a reassurance.

“I’m fine,” she called out, relieved that her voice was steadier than she expected it to be. “I just, um, I stubbed my toe.”

Armin pleaded at her with an incredulous wide-eyed look, as if asking her what kind of toe-stubbing could have possibly warranted the sound that came out of her, and she quickly remedied, “...on a paring blade, I’m—I’m practicing.”

To their dismay, alarm spiked in Connie’s voice—understandable, for someone whose friend may very well have sliced their toe clean off—and panic poured cold down Mikasa’s spine as his feet struck the floorboards again, moving for the door—and she didn’t remember whether she’d locked it after Armin came in. “Oh, holy _shit_ , is it—”

“Don’t come in!” she cried out, and heard him pause at the frantic note in her voice. “I’m naked.” That, at least, was the truth.

“You’re… practicing naked with the 3DMG blades?” he asked, confusion thick in his voice, but she heard him step back away from the doorway anyways. She sighed in relief.

“Yes. It… makes you more aerodynamic.”

“Huh,” Connie mumbled to himself outside. “Good to know. Well… as long as your toe’s fine.”

She heard him loitering in the hall, waiting for a confirmation, and so she assured him once again that it was. The two of them waited eagerly for his footsteps to taper off, for that door to click shut once again—and Armin released a long, shaky breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding. The black-haired girl peered up at him enigmatically—something twisting at the corners of her lips, quivering in her chin—before it finally bubbled up, and she snorted. Clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her chuckling—and Armin realized, bizarrely, that he couldn’t help laughing, too. In spite of everything, an easygoing warmth, something content and familiar, boiled up between them. And maybe it was due in part to the giddy relief that washed over them when Connie walked away—that taut-strung tension snapping loose—or maybe it had more to do with buoy of endorphins they were both floating on, or the turmoil buried beneath it—but all at once, the ludicrousness of the entire situation seemed to set in. And he hung his head slightly, breathing out a laugh, as Mikasa tossed her head back, still muffling defeated giggles under her palm. It was comfortable between the two of them, light-feeling—oddly so, he thought, given everything, given this day, but he was grateful for it. Grateful for her. Hadn’t ever expected, if someone had asked him, to be laughing with his best friend while they fucked on the anniversary of Eren’s death—would have told this person they’d lost their mind—but here they were.

“You— _pfft_ , you shouldn’t have told Connie that,” he whispered in a chuckle, shaking his head. “He’s gonna try that and lose something.”

“I know,” Mikasa barely forced out between laughs, eyes crinkled in a smile, trying to keep quiet and nodding her head.

After a moment, the black-haired girl gingerly moved her hands, still snickering, and let them clasp Armin’s face. She swept him up in another kiss, fingers spread hot over his cheek—still laughing against his lips. And he felt more than heard her murmur breathlessly, against them, “Keep—keep going.”

His cock throbbed inside her at the words, still painfully hard, and she shifted, arched against him. Slowly, he did as she asked—pulling out of her and plunging slowly back in—listened to her soft whine as he did. He gradually began working up a pace again, shivers thrilling through him—moved his knees up beneath her, smoothed his hands over the underside of her spread thighs and pushed them up, so that her hips were raised and her knees were pressed closer to her chest. Figured the angle might help, for their purposes. And remembering that still had something gnawing anxiously at the back of his skull, still had concern swinging heavy in his stomach—but he swallowed it back, forced it down. Reminded himself why he had said yes to begin with.

The feeling welled up again a lot faster than he expected as he thrust into her—that pressure squeezing pleasurably in his gut—throbbing in his cock, painfully hard and aching for relief. And as he slipped again and again into her wetness, the quicker it came over him—trembling in his thighs as his hips slapped wet against hers, as she struggled to keep quiet—giving in to her, with every messy and breathless kiss he caught her mouth in—and it was swelling up, coiling tight enough to burst—

Armin muffled a shout in the pillow next to her head, smacked their hips together hard as he came, as that blinding, white-hot relief crashed over him, as he collapsed into it. He groaned weakly as he spilled himself into her, pleasure coursing through him. Felt Mikasa’s legs shaking against him, heard the quiet moan she breathed out when she felt his cock pulsing inside of her, felt the heat of it within her. He became absently aware of Mikasa’s hand drifting up to the back of his head, of her fingers threading through the dark gold hair at his nape, as he finished. Her other arm wrapped around his back, clutched him tightly against her—and her fingers kept stroking through his hair, soothingly, as their chests heaved with breath, flush together.

Once he was spent, Armin relaxed against her—thought better of it once he had, but his weight didn’t seem to bother her. Breathed out slowly. And despite what he’d told himself, a small and unfamiliar guilt and dread still prickled at his gut—and even if he trusted Mikasa, this was something he couldn’t take back, and what the hell would he do if she had changed her mind—and this budding seed of worry did start to twine its roots into his mind—

“Thank you,” she whispered—something soft, happy—and his thoughts rolled to a stop.

He let her hold him steadfast against her as their breathing steadied, as their raucous heartbeats settled—and the chord those words struck in him was still thrumming loud in his ears. The heart-soaring type of feeling that stultified doubt, even in this murky ambiguity. The type of feeling that surged warm into his chest when he finally did draw back—saw her quiet smile, in the midst of this hurt. And this felt like more than enough. Armin didn’t know what to say—settled for leaning down and pecking her lips again. Felt her soft and pleased exhale wash cool over his skin.

He pulled out of her with a soft shudder, moved to lay by her side. Sucking in a breath at the sudden emptiness, she dropped her quivering legs down onto the sheets, letting them sprawl out limply. He lolled his head over to face her, golden hair fanning over the pillow and damp with sweat. If they wanted to be effective, there was likely still more that could be done.

“...It might be better to keep your hips raised, for a little bit longer,” he tentatively proposed, reaching for the pillow beneath his head. She just stared at him quizzically.

“Why?”

He blinked back at her, before awkwardly meandering toward an answer—wincing a little in embarrassment as he managed, “You know, so it doesn’t… all fall out, straight away.”

Mikasa made a face, but she uttered a soft hum in understanding, accepting the pillow from him and placing it under her hips, casually hugging her knees. She turned to him again—and that hard-to-read expression was back with a vengeance.

It wasn’t weird now, even if it by all means should have been, he thought to himself. But with the passion and pleasure falling out of the foreground, the thoughts he was stewing on earlier spilled into the front of his mind. Eren spilled into his mind, like a sickness. And he was struck with a different gut-wrenching kind of guilt. He didn’t feel guilty for sleeping with Mikasa—not at all, actually—but guilty, in a way, for how he mourned. And he had loved him nearly his entire life—because of and in spite of the fundamental things he had always known about Eren, but had maybe hoped he wasn’t capable of. Loved a man who couldn’t be pleaded or bargained with. Loved a man who claimed to have divinely righteous reason for child-slaughter. Loved a man who bore his love for him and Mikasa as war paint, who twisted that deep passion into hideous rage—and how could he cope with _still_ , after all these years, loving that?

He shifted toward the only other person he knew who _could_ cope with that—scooted closer, so that their shoulders were touching. Knew she was looking at him in concern—the guilt etched plainly on his face. And she bit her lip, mind whirling, as if spinning back the reel to remember the last time he’d smiled—to when he was laughing above her—

“We can try again tomorrow,” she offered with a sincere look. “Or the day after, if that’s better.”

And his heart sunk a little bit once he understood, because even though they probably would need to keep trying, anyways, the way it was suggested pained him. As if it was an offer to take comfort in her, a way to give him what little she could, if it would remedy how he felt—and he didn’t want her to think like that, didn’t want that at all. Armin was trying to think of a way to communicate this, when her hand moved to clasp his, resting by his side.

He intertwined his fingers with hers, lifted her hand to his lips—closed his eyes and pressed a firm, almost pained kiss to the back of it. And the gesture somehow felt just as intimate as everything else they’d done, maybe more so—maybe too intimate for a gesture between friends. He wondered if that mattered, anymore.

“Whenever you want,” he murmured sincerely, looked her in the eyes. Wanted so badly to alleviate any of this ache and unfairness from her, to untether her from this cruel thing that had curled up between the three of them. “Anything you want.”

She nodded, swallowed hard. Mikasa rolled her head back to look at the ceiling, mulling over how to say what she wanted—eyes raking over the deep grooves in the wood, and the flickering shadows they cast by lamplight. The dancing shapes and faces she could see, bending and swaying at the whim of the lapping flame.

“I… I _want_ to do it again, tomorrow,” she ventured simply, sounding nervous—and Armin realized, from how the flush rose in her cheeks again, that this want had less to do with their original purpose for sleeping together, and that was what she was tentatively confessing to him. That she had enjoyed it, and wanted more.

“Yeah—yeah, me too,” he was quick to agree and reassure her, stammering a bit, and she visibly relaxed. The edge of her lip quirked upwards, the smallest smile ghosting over her mouth, and she closed her eyes. 

Armin noticed they were still holding hands, fingers limply linked together. And that was odd as well, familiar with a person and in a way that he didn’t want to think about… but at the same time, this contact was welcomed, nearly necessary. At risk of getting dragged under this swell of hard-to-parse emotions, he didn’t know how else he’d keep afloat if he wasn’t steadied to her, somehow. He caught himself dreading even letting his fingers twitch, for fear that she’d draw her hand back, and that he’d have no real reason to ask for it again.

They stayed like that for quite a while, until Armin noticed that her legs had fallen back to the bed and she was nodding off. The blonde gently nudged her awake, convinced her to go to the bathroom—privy to completely incoherent grumbling as she sat up, blearily rubbing her eyes—and he followed his own advice too, getting dressed and walking to the restroom. And he should have just headed back to his room afterwards—doubted he had forgotten anything in her room, after all—but he found himself coming face to face with her doorway again.

Deciding it was probably safest to forego knocking, he tested the handle, felt it give easily. It had been left unlocked.

Easing it open as silently as he could, he poked his head inside. Mikasa was tucked back into the sheets, dark hair pooling over the pillow, looking even drowsier than she’d been when he’d roused her. But she still raised a hand to beckon him in when she saw him, and there was still oil burning low in the lamp. As if she’d been waiting for him. 

And this realization was as touching as it was confusing. Because there was no one breathing on this earth that Armin loved more than her, and even if this fundamental facet of their friendship would never change, it felt like—in the depths of this raw and candid intimacy—maybe something else _had_ changed between them. It was hard for him to tell.

Once he made sure, this time, that the door was locked behind him—reassuring himself that he could be awake and out before daybreak without anyone noticing—he scooted beneath the sheets and sidled up next to her. An arm snaked over his side once he had settled, and her head thumped against his chest, warm and heavy. Somehow, it felt just as harmless and faultless as the sleepovers they’d had as kids—and maybe it wasn’t time to think about everything less faultless that preceded this, or the gut-dropping gravitas of remembering the end goal of this was to make someone—because her eyelids were heavy, drooping shut—and he was content, for the moment. Content to breathe in the familiar scent of her hair as it tickled under his nose, to hold her tight against him, with all the tenderness in the world.

Mikasa slept like the dead, and Armin lay awake, counting the days until he joined them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! And thank you a million times over to Kate (@vxxv) for being the best pal anyone could have, ever, and for encouraging me and giving me the confidence to post this in the first place (in addition to being a genius and so immensely talented that it's hardly fair to anyone else). ♡
> 
> For those wondering, the title is the title of a song from the Devilman Crybaby OST which hurts my feelings every time I listen to it sdsjksjk
> 
> Feedback means the world to me, seriously, and I love hearing from you guys. ♡ Hopefully the next chap is up soon! I'm @albatrost on tumblr, if you ever wanna chat!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Armin reminded her about the good things, like he always had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In all honesty, I didn't expect Chapter 2 to be finished so quickly! I have more to say, but I’ll save it for the end!

Every bit of it became easier, somehow.

Over the next weeks, every couple days without fail, Mikasa would invite him, often with so little as a gesture, and Armin would visit her room in the middle of the night. They never went to his room, if not only for the unwelcome extra speculation that a change of neighbors presented. They hadn’t woken anybody else yet, to their knowledge—though they’d shared that they both doubted anyone besides Connie would have the good-natured cluelessness to walk up to the door if they were roused.

The sex was easier, that fumbling awkwardness cast aside. Much of it faded away in less time than it took a fresh bruise to fade, deep aubergine dwindling into yellowed blotches—yet even if the colors waned, that tenderness to the touch, that novelty, still remained. An underlying fascination that had less to do with something new and more to do with each other, but which neither of them had given a name.

That felt innocuous enough to Armin—more than other developments, maybe. Learning to lust after his best friend became easier, whether or not it should have been. Wanting her was fine when they were tucked away together between the sheets, in a clandestine world all their own, but less so in the daylight—felt unsettling to watch her brush a black strand of hair behind her ear, as they ate with their other friends in the mess hall, and to realize how long his eyes lingered affectionately on the gesture. Felt unsettling to catch himself focusing intently on the shape of her lips when she was talking, and to feel his stomach flutter when they stretched into a smile.

Learning what she liked became easier, with every time he coaxed her over the edge. He became more adept at stoking that warmth within her, taking cues from every trembling breath, from how her fingernails dug into his flesh, from how her hips rolled and writhed. Enjoyed bringing her to climax, particularly on the days he managed to do it more than once. And there were still boundaries yet to be crossed—for example, how he was certain he’d do a better job with his mouth than with his hand—wanted badly, sometimes, to lower his head between her thighs and pleasure her that way—but how that felt a little too personal to mention to a friend. He remembered that his mouth had been better for Eren, whether or not he wanted to linger on that—and swallowing those fervent memories down became easier too, when he wanted to forget. It became nearly natural to take solace in what they had, to bend into this relief. To lean into something that felt a hair’s breadth away from happiness.

Coming to terms with their end goal became easier as well—and to his surprise, despite how rushed and desperate this decision had felt in the first place, he had no qualms about it. Hung onto that sliver of a vision he had seen on the first night, of a future and family with her, and told himself he wanted it— _allowed_ himself to want it, even if it didn’t feel like his to want. Armin thought maybe he should be more daunted by the idea of raising a child, and he had decided that he _would_ from the moment he had told her yes, even if she had never asked that of him. He thought he would be more daunted by the idea that he had a lot more to plan for now, in his brief future—and by the fact that a lot more was suddenly at stake. Yet despite all the careful deliberations in the world, it didn’t feel entirely real yet—was still some shapeless and intangible thing, woven of hypotheticals. No more than an aim, a goal.

The one thing that did plague him, something incessant, was a wordless worry for her safety if this _did_ work—worse after they lay together, sometimes, a concerned crease in his brow. And he knew Mikasa could tell when he was worrying—knew that she didn’t want him to—but often his mind raced without him. 

He’d spent a lot of time thinking, recently.

The first hint that they’d been successful in their goal was murmured to Armin late at night, when they lay next to each other in the mussed sheets, room silent except for their heavy breaths.

They’d been as silent as they could stand to be beforehand—a slew of muffled gasps, of barely suppressed whimpers, and a steady thump and creak against the bedframe. Mikasa had lowered herself onto him, threading their fingers together and bracing her weight against his hands—the frail gold lamplight catching on the muscles of her bare back as she straddled him. Gilding her shoulder blades as they tightened. Painting a clean crescent of light along the curve of her spine as her back arched, as she rocked her hips against him.

It was a particularly hot evening for the end of the hot season—made clear through sweat-slicked skin and ragged breath—and he could feel the sweat slipping between their palms as she chased her own end, as her hips curved and swayed torturously slow with her movements. Could see the sweat sluice off her candle-white skin in the honeyed glow, each glistening droplet a bead of melted wax. Could see her wavering as she inched closer, heard the shallow and heady pitch in her breath—flexing and arching and trembling as she rode him, worked herself to the edge—until he watched her body buckle above him. She curled in tight against him—clenched hard around his cock and pressed her mouth to his shoulder to smother her cry. Tried painfully and breathlessly hard to bury that sound beneath his flesh—and even if the muffled noise still rang quietly throughout the room, that sound _did_ get under his skin—shuddered down his spine something delicious.

Mikasa rested limp against him for a minute, catching her breath—and he slipped his hands from her lax fingers, wrapped his arms around her—listened to the soft hum of approval that left her lips. And Armin found himself stupidly rapt with her drowsy, pleased hum—just as captivated as he’d been watching her fall apart above him, giving in to something all-encroaching and rapturous. 

Experimentally, he rolled his hips forward, relished in the soft sound she tucked against the pulse in his throat—started to steadily thrust into her as he folded her tight in his arms—and it wasn’t long before he felt some similar euphoria welling up in his gut, reached out for it. Mikasa moved, trying to shift her balance back up onto her arms—at least becoming steady enough on her strained, trembling legs to match his thrusts, smack her hips steadily against his. Armin met her eyes briefly as she leaned over him, before his own fluttered shut as it started to build, to come over him. He had figured out, at some point, that Mikasa liked to see it—liked watching how his expression knotted up, brows knit tightly, liked to watch how carelessly it untangled when he came undone. And that was a little embarrassing in its own right—thought it might be embarrassing even if they weren’t friends, even if they’d been lovers for years—but he was going to oblige her either way, eventually. And his thrusts were growing erratic as he brought a hand down to her hip—clasped the other to her cheek, sweaty fingers rifling through thick dark hair—heard her choke back a moan as their hips slapped together, felt her head lean feverishly into his touch. That moan broke loose when she finally felt him tense beneath her, heard him bite back a groan—felt his hips jerk once, twice, a couple of times—felt him spilling inside of her. Mikasa curled her palm over the back of his hand, still pressed to her face, and held it there—released a shaky breath as she watched him come down, squeezed his hand a little tighter. His eyes fluttered open—and the oil was burning lower in the lamp now, the glow permeating the room so dim he could barely make anything out—but he still saw her soft expression, smiled weakly back at her. 

They shared a brief kiss, and she raised herself off of him afterwards, quick to lay on her back. Armin took a deep breath of the hot wet summer air, thick with the scent of sweat and sex—wiped perspiration from his brow, and wondered if they both couldn’t use a shower—before he noticed how still Mikasa was. An unusual stiffness tinted her pose now, and she had fallen oddly quiet. Tense with the decision to share something with him.

“It’s, um, it’s a week late.”

Despite how softly they were said, her words cut clear and crisp through the settling quiet. A moment or two passed before Armin understood what she was talking about—but once it dawned on him he shifted up quickly onto an elbow, whipped his head in her direction.

The dark-haired girl still stared at the ceiling, worrying her lip. And his expression fell a little in confusion as he watched the uncertain and nervous way she gnawed at her lip, as he dwelled on the tentative way she had shared it—because wasn’t this supposed to be hopeful news? She waited with bated breath for him to say something back—and he wondered if she _had_ changed her mind—knew that at least there were things that could be done for that too, if she had. Armin tried to quell his concern, carefully probing for clarity.

“That’s… a good sign, right?”

She swiveled her head, blinked at him for a moment… before she relaxed, muscles uncoiling into the sheets. Breathed out a soft nervous laugh, as if she didn’t know what she’d been so worried about. And all at once, Armin realized that the thing she’d been anxiously holding out for was his reaction.

“Yeah, it’s… it’s a good sign,” she nodded, a gentle smile gracing her features. Her expression was rife with a tender kind of relief, tension dissipating.

He leaned over to cup her face and plant a kiss on her forehead, hoping his enthusiasm leaked through the gesture—wanted her to know he wanted this—pecked her excitedly on both cheeks and heard her laugh, skin ticklish under his lips. When he drew back she was looking at him, a soft flush in her cheeks and a quiet contentment in her eyes. Something adorant, and something he wasn’t quite prepared for. Something that had him feeling more at peace than he thought he would ever have the right to be.

And even as he smiled genuinely back, his heart hammered tightly in his chest, leapt up into his throat—because now, for the first time, there _was_ a stirring of something real—and it felt like it had happened so _fast_. He paused to ponder on how long they’d been doing this—three, maybe four weeks—not a full month, he was certain of that. And he felt like he had heard that sometimes it could take months, maybe even years, at a time to successfully conceive. A part of him didn’t actually think they’d get it on the first round. Thought that they would have more time.

Even if it did make his lungs shallow and his legs shaky to think about how much closer this now felt, he admonished himself—less time now was more time later. More time with… _their_ child. Even if it was just a sign, even if it may not mean anything quite yet, it was possible that Mikasa was going to be a mother. The mother of his child—something which still sounded so deeply foreign to him, no matter how often he’d turned the words over in his head over the past weeks. That alone had the air spiraling from his lungs with some giddy feeling he couldn’t explain. Something as thrilled to be racing forward as it was desperate to stamp on the brakes. And after he’d tapped into this thought, he couldn’t _stop_ thinking. 

Thinking about how in nine months’ time there might be a person, woven of Mikasa’s flesh and blood, who they were meant to protect and nurture, to teach and raise—to whom they were meant to show the world, in all its brilliant color and rich textures, in all its alluring promise. Thinking about how they could tuck and crease away the world’s ugly corners at first, at least while the child was young, but not forever. 

Thinking about how seven years still seemed too young to be told about the cruelties of the world, but that was all the time he would have—and perhaps he was wasting time worrying about words he’d never have the chance to speak. 

Thinking about this vulnerable child at the mercy of that world. 

Thinking about whether Mikasa was afraid of that, too—afraid of any of it—and wondering if she would tell him if she was.

And even if it was far less pressing, something else occurred to Armin that was just as puzzling, the longer he dwelled on what Mikasa could be thinking. He caught himself thinking about it long after they were ready for bed, long after he’d felt her drift off in his arms. He wondered why exactly Mikasa had still been asking him to her room if she already thought she might be pregnant.

She asked him again, two days later, and he visited her room as if nothing had changed.

  


* * *

The second hint that they’d been successful unfolded a couple of weeks later, after a particularly tumultuous and flip-filled bout of routine maneuvering training, when she landed, dropped to her knees, and promptly vomited across Jean’s boots.

“ _Shit!_ ” Jean sputtered out, nearly leaping out of his skin when Mikasa’s breakfast splashed over the toes of his shoes. Once he understood, wide-eyed, he dropped into a crouch, glancing over her in a panic. “Mikasa—fuck, are you alright!?”

The black-haired girl was breathing heavily, chest shaky as it heaved, rattling with each breath. She noticed Jean, but still kept her pallid face turned down, expression queasy as she stared at the grass. Sounding dazed, she managed, “Sorry, Jean, I don’t… I don’t think I’m feeling very well.”

“No shit,” Jean breathed out, brows furrowed deep with concern as he appraised her. Even though it had never happened before, there was a first time for everything, and he cautiously asked, “Did—did you get motion-sick or something?”

“No,” she nearly groaned, voice strained taut, and she spit onto the ground. Pinched her eyes shut and shook her head. “I don’t know. I… I felt bad before I started the course, this was probably a bad idea.”

She felt Jean place a hand on her shoulder as she spit into the grass a couple more times—bile rising when she felt the rushes of saliva still welling hot in her mouth. Jean was mulling over asking her whether she needed to go to her room or the infirmary when she smacked his hand off her shoulder and shoved him back—making sure he was out of the way—before wretching into the grass again.

The tall man struggled to get back up on his heels, wincing a little in sympathetic disgust—and the familiar squeal of grappling cord spinning back onto the reel caught his attention. He snapped his head over his shoulder, dark ash blonde hair falling into his eyes, in time to see Armin land behind him.

“What’s... going on?” he asked, sounding a little out of breath and trying to peer around Jean. Armin had seen them finish the course, saw what he assumed were both of them hunching over on the ground, but the darting aerial view revealed little else.

“Mikasa’s sick,” Jean explained, moving out of the way.

The woman in question lifted her head slightly then, oil-black strands of hair dangling in front of her face, some color returning to her cheeks. She levelled Armin with a somewhat loaded stare when they locked eyes. And he realized that this was something he’d forgotten might happen—hadn’t even thought about it—and the cold sinking feeling of having something new to feel guilty about hardly rivaled how fast his head was spinning—because even if, last she’d shared, that blood still hadn’t come, this felt like evidence of its own, in a way. He tried not to get ahead of himself.

“...Sick? Like you’re feeling… _sick_?” he managed with careful emphasis, looking at her as if for confirmation.

“Yes,” she nodded back, looking a little too serious. “I believe I am sick.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed out, feeling a little lightheaded, a torrent of emotions swelling in his chest—before that guilty anchor tugged him back down, and he folded his hands in front of his mouth. There was something pensive and apologetic in the gesture as he mumbled, “but, _shit_ , you’re sick…”

Jean squinted suspiciously between the two of them during the odd exchange, before rolling his eyes in exasperation at Armin. “Yes, Armin, she’s sick. What the hell are you—nevermind. C’mon, get over here and help me get her up.”

The blonde nodded and walked to her other side, realizing that in front of Jean probably wasn’t the best place to have this conversation. He crouched beside her, splaying his hand on her back and rubbing gently. Felt the taut muscles in her back ease a bit. “Are you good to walk?”

Mikasa nodded back, seeming steadier. “I think so. I’m feeling a little better than I was before.”

She let the both of them help her to her feet, and they made off across the grassy courtyard slowly.

“Did you wanna head to the infirmary?” Jean asked curiously. “They could give you a quick check, see what’s wrong.”

“No,” Mikasa blurted out a little too quickly. She wasn’t sure exactly what the infirmary staff could test for, but she figured if they were still trying to avoid suspicion—at least until they’d waited long enough to ascertain that this was what they thought, that it was viable—it was best to forego a check-up. If she _was_ pregnant, it felt risky to let the word out—after all, she would only be a handful of weeks into something that was definitely not in the best interest of the military branch she actively served, or of the country that had extended its hands in welcome to her. “I’m tired. I’d rather just go back to my room.”

That bit was true—and the fatigue had only been worsened by her heaving, soreness seeping into her muscles. Jean nodded, and the two men walked her all the way to the sleeping quarters—a little off-kilter, since she sloped sideways between the heights of their shoulders. 

When they reached the foot of the steps, Mikasa was quick to blurt out, “You probably shouldn’t take those inside.”

Jean peered at her curiously, before following her line of sight down toward his bile-smeared boots. It was a valid concern—even if Mikasa had delivered the line a bit too quickly. Hoping that he honed in on that, rather than on how antsy she was getting to talk to Armin alone, she followed up with, “You need to clean them before they stain.”

“Uh, stain?” he mumbled out, unsure exactly how pristine his military-issue boots needed to be as long as they were in working order.

“Try—” Mikasa started and then abruptly paused, lifting a fist to cover her mouth—swallowed hard around a sound in the back of her throat. She took a breath, finished, “—try talcum powder.”

Jean was quick to step back, and looked at Armin without envy. “If you’re taking her to her room instead of the bathroom, you should probably bring a bucket.”

Armin nodded in assent. “There’s a cleaning supply closet by the stairs, on the way up,” he mentioned.

Jean parted ways with them after that, wishing Mikasa a quick recovery, and it was just the two of them ambling into the building.

“Was that, uh, just to frighten Jean off?” he turned to her, trying to sound as hopeful as he was cautious.

She snorted softly, as if that hadn’t occurred to her—forced out, “I really wish it was.”

And Armin blanched a little himself when he saw the color draining from her cheeks again, hands clamoring for the supply closet’s doorknob.

  


* * *

“Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mikasa sick before,” Connie commented offhandedly, before tearing into a piece of bread. He was sidled up by Jean at the dining table like always, across from Armin, but one usual occupant of the bench was missing.

It was possible that he was referencing her bout of illness during 3DMG training—but word of mouth carried that she had also gotten ill the day after that, and the day after that—and it had been over half a week since she’d sat in the mess hall to eat with them.

“I don’t know about that,” Jean frowned. He lifted the spoonful of stew to his mouth—chewed pensively on a mouthful of soft potato for a moment—before swallowing and inquiring, “Didn’t she catch that awful cold that went around the girls’ barracks? You know, during our second year in the training corps?”

“Mm, no,” Connie shook his head determinedly—bit off a piece of bread and kept chewing as he continued, “She was one of only, what, three girls who didn’t catch it? We should’ve been suspicious of her magical Ackerpowers then, to be honest.”

Jean nodded a little plaintively, brows drawn as he remembered. “Shit, that was brutal, though. I remember there was a solid week where only a handful of them could show up. Shadis quarantined _everybody_ after that.”

“Who started it again?” Connie pursed his lips. “Wasn’t it Mina?”

The dark blonde snorted, nodded his head. “Yeah, it was definitely Mina who brought it in. She was coughing before anyone else. But she denied it on her life because she knew half the girls would kick her ass for it,” he shook his head with a smile. 

And that was a face they hadn’t seen in five years—warm dark eyes and round cheeks and black pigtails. A part of Jean wondered how long that blurry image would stay imprinted on his mind—that temporal vignette already dimming the edges. He wondered when it had become easy to look back fondly and laugh when they talked about the dead. The man remembered the first time he’d heard vets in nostalgic banter about a fallen friend, and he hadn’t understood how they could bear it. Those vets had fallen since, and it was clearer to him, now.

“For good reason,” Connie snorted, and there was a terse softness to his voice when he added, “I remember Sasha told me her throat was so sore she didn’t even have an appetite. After hearing _that_ I was like, shit, this is serious. Looks like this is fatal and the 104th are just gonna die off, I guess.”

Jean chuckled at the joke, shared a sympathetic look with Connie as he reminisced. And some losses were still easier to bear than others.

Armin had hardly tuned in to a word of it, eyes glued to the text before him—thumbing through page after page of a book describing the medicinal uses of herbs. It was the only version he’d been able to get his hands on that detailed remedies using plants that were non-native to Paradis as well. Every medical tome he’d found written within the walls exalted the use of mint to treat nausea—and he knew Dr. Jaeger had cultivated it for that purpose, made a tincture of it—but Mikasa had hesitantly admitted mint leaves hadn’t done anything to help.

His fingertip traced over an unfamiliar one—brows rising in eagerness when the pad of his finger alighted on “relieves nausea”. However, his expression fell just as quickly when his eyes skimmed over “risk of miscarriage”. Frowning, he flipped to the next page.

The two plates of food beside him had gone untouched—one because he’d barely gotten the chance to eat during his distraction, the other because he was saving it for Mikasa. The blonde had made a habit of filling an extra plate for her anyways at mealtimes and taking it to her room—leaving it on a chair outside the door in case the smell set her off, before going in to check on her. And sometimes the food was well-received, but often it wasn’t, and the plate he’d come back to pick up would barely be picked-over.

Finger drifting over the page, Armin startled as he finally found something promising—before the mention of his name splintered his focus.

“—Armin would know, if anyone would,” Connie finished, turning to look at him expectantly.

Caught off guard, Armin swallowed, stammered out, “What—what would I know?”

“Well, you’ve known Mikasa longer than anyone else,” Connie started. Although he hadn’t heard what they were talking about, his stomach plunged low when he realized it was about Mikasa… until Connie asked, “Have you ever seen her sick before?”

Armin released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Peered down at the smooth wooden table and nodded as he thought about it. “Yeah, she’s been sick before. She was really sick, once.”

With Jean and Connie both waiting on more, he inhaled, began to recollect. “When we were still in the refugee camps, after the fall of Wall Maria, this horrible fever swept through. It was so cramped, you know—even after the reclamation mission, and all the space and resources that cleared up, the shelters were still overflowing. Dirty, too—sick people sleeping sprawled on the floors, back to back with strangers—so it spread like wildfire. Somehow, Mikasa didn’t catch it then, either.”

Remorse lingered in his sad smile as he added, “Eren and I did, though. She probably wouldn’t have gotten sick if she wasn’t taking care of us. We told her not to, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Connie and Jean exchanged an uncertain glance then, unsure what to make of Armin’s guilt-ridden expression—unsure if it was sourced from his role then, or from worry for Mikasa’s illness now, or from the mention of Eren’s name. Either way, Jean tried the second one first, easing in carefully, “But she got better, right? And I’m sure this is the same, and she’ll feel better again in no time.”

Armin gestured vaguely—knew Jean was only trying to reassure him, and couldn’t explain to him why this was different. And even though they were different, they felt the same, somehow. Something at his fault and at her expense. “Well… yeah, her fever only lasted a few days. It was over quicker than either of ours, and we took care of her, too.”

“See? She’s gonna be fine,” Jean leaned back—feeling confident that he’d correctly pinpointed the cause for Armin’s concern—before something dawned on him, and he looked down at his food almost ruefully. “On that note, though, I really don’t wanna catch whatever the hell she has. I didn’t even think about that when I was cleaning my boots the other day.”

Armin breathed out a soft laugh through his nose before he could help it—quickly recovered with, “I promise that you won’t. You... would’ve gotten sick by now.”

Jean hummed thoughtfully and relaxed a little at the words, successfully reassured.

“Is she eating what you bring her?” Connie asked, leaning forward to plant his elbows on the table.

“Hm? Yeah, sometimes,” he answered, sounding a little more optimistic than he felt. “Not… all the time, though. Sometimes she’s feeling fine, sometimes she’s too nauseous to even look at food—”

Armin paused when he noticed Connie’s eyes flickering between his own and Mikasa’s plate, lingering a little too long on the bread roll resting on the lip of the dish. The blonde’s eyes narrowed, and his voice was flat as he stated more than asked, “Are you only asking because you want her bread?”

“Huh? That’s not _why_ ,” Connie raised his hands defensively. He then lowered his voice, wandering toward a clarification as he mumbled, “...but, I just meant, if it’s gonna go to waste anyways—”

Armin rolled his eyes, sighed, “It’s not going to waste. Here, just take mine.” He plucked the bread off his own plate and passed it to Connie without a second thought, before looking back down at the book and trying to find his place. He was absently aware of Jean scolding Connie for inconsideration, and of a brief tussle that ended with Jean tossing a half-eaten piece of bread back onto Armin’s plate, but that was background noise compared to the deeply promising information he’d stumbled on.

  


* * *

The soft rapping of knuckles on the door, bone to wood, stirred Mikasa. The woman laid back on her made bed, coal-black hair fanning over sheets tucked smooth and neat beneath her—and she’d been up for a while, though she hadn’t been expecting company. Already anticipating who the guest was, however, she shifted to sit up, scooting back so she could lean against the pillows and headboard, and called him in.

A gentle creak, and Armin’s familiar face peeked into the room. Relaxing a little when he saw her, he breathed out, “Oh good, you’re already awake.”

“And you’re early,” she mumbled back. An almost nasal tone underlied her voice, and Armin realized she was probably trying not to breathe through her nose. Not a great morning, then. He knew the mornings were always worse for her, but unfortunately, the feeling was hardly confined to that time of day.

She levelled him with a somewhat curious glance when she noticed the teacup in his hands, but merely remarked, “I didn’t think breakfast started for another hour.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” he murmured as he shut the door behind him, walked closer to the bed. “There’s just, there’s something I want you to try, if you can—”

Mikasa groaned somewhat pitiably, shook her head. “I’m sorry, Armin, but I promise you that whatever it is, I don’t wanna drink it right now.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he apologized with a wince, pulling up a chair next to the bed. He settled himself on it as he tried to bargain with her. “It’s supposed to help. People use it for this exact purpose, in countries all over the world. It doesn’t grow here, though.”

Mikasa pursed her lips, but took the teacup from his hands anyways when he offered it. Her inky black eyes flickered up to meet his in a wary glance, as if she was a little scared to try tasting anything right now, but she still lifted the rim of the cup up to her nose, sniffed lightly. And her expression changed.

“What is this?” she murmured curiously, brow furrowed as if she was trying to place it. “It’s familiar.”

“It’s ginger,” Armin answered—and he couldn’t help his voice picking up a little bit in excitement when she didn’t immediately turn it away, lifted the rim to her lips. “It actually comes from Hizuru. You may have had it before, when you were over there.”

She was starting to nod to herself, and she took another tentative little sip. “I think I have. Not by itself, in a tea, but in something I ate.”

She paused, peeking to the side at him, and a small smile curled at the edge of her lips when she noticed how intently Armin was watching her drink it, all but holding his breath. Trying not to look too amused, she shared, “It’s not bad. I like it.”

Armin did release a soft sigh of relief then—looked a little self-conscious when he also realized how laughably focused he had been on her drinking—but he smiled back at her. And even if they couldn’t tell yet if it was making her feel any better, at least she was able to get it down without trouble. Something occurred to Armin then, and mild confusion tinted his features.

“Why’re you up so early, anyways?” he asked. He had almost been expecting to find her still asleep.

Drawing the cup away from her mouth and swallowing slowly, she clarified, “I planned to get up early to work out. Sometimes it makes me feel better, so I thought I might work up an appetite for breakfast.” The girl paused, brushed a raven strand of hair behind her ear, before continuing, “...But I felt nauseous when I woke up, and it got worse after a handful of crunches, and I made myself sick. Again.”

Armin frowned at the tired way her shoulders dropped, watched her lift the cup for another gulp of tea. That tiredness dripped off her every motion, sunk into the sallowness of her cheeks, hung thick in every nauseous swallow—and all the miserable little smiles in the world weren’t enough to reassure Armin of how she felt. And the words bubbled up before he really had the chance to think them over, but at the very least, he made sure to deliver the question carefully, quietly.

“Do… do you regret it?”

Mikasa blinked in surprise at the question, hadn’t been expecting it. On reflex, she opened her mouth to deny it, but slowly closed it again. She bit her lip, thinking on it for a moment. 

Her lip quirked in a telling and unfortunate smile, and she caved with a painfully earnest, “Ask me again in a handful of weeks.”

Armin breathed out something like a laugh—maybe would have laughed, if leaden guilt didn’t rest heavy on his gut. Concern glinted in his eyes as he worried his lip. “I’m sorry.”

She raised a brow as she took another sip. “For what? Doing what I asked you to do?”

“Yes,” he stated plainly.

Mikasa gave him a sympathetic look, before something seemed to dawn on her. Tentatively wading out a bit into unknown black waters, into something they still hadn’t talked about. “Well… do you regret it?”

“What?” Armin blinked. “No, that’s not what I meant. Of course not.”

“I realize I didn’t… really ask you what you wanted, then,” she mumbled, lowering the cup into her lap. Gesturing loosely with one hand, she managed, “I don’t want you to think that you have to—I wasn’t trying to—”

“I want to,” Armin interrupted firmly, earnestly. As if anything else would have been unthinkable.

He reached out to take the hand she’d been waving, clasped it in his own. Squeezed softly. And it was tricky, because even if he _would_ put her desires above his own, he wanted her to know that it was because he was willing to. Wanted her to know there wasn’t a single part of him that spurned how she cared for him, even in its most selfish parts.

“I… wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want it. All of it. I mean it.” 

Mikasa pressed her lips together in a waxen line—stared at their linked hands thoughtfully—before she realized he might be waiting on her response. She met his eyes with a small and hopeful smile, nodded. A smile less tense with sickness than the other ones, and a smile less heavy with what went unspoken.

Exuberance lifted in his chest at seeing her that way, and it was as if this great quiet thing had crumbled away from in between them, leaving easiness in its wake. Armin felt like he might as well confess a little more, while they were still talking so openly.

“I think about it a lot, actually.” 

He carefully added, “In, uh, in a good way, I mean. In a nervous way too, sometimes, but… for things I probably shouldn’t be worried about just yet,” he laughed sheepishly, as if a little embarrassed by his own concerns, as if he thought she may think they were trivial. “Nervous… on their behalf. Not about them, but for them, you know?”

Mikasa nodded in eager understanding. Knew what he meant more than even he could begin to understand. She gnawed at her lip for a moment, before admitting, “Me too. I keep thinking through these ridiculous scenarios where something happens to me, and they end up alone.”

Armin’s thumb smoothed across her knuckles, grazed over the skin.

“I don’t even… think to worry about what happens to me in these cases, just straight to them,” she muttered—paused to breathe out a laugh like it was silly. Propped her chin in her hand and raised her eyebrows as she looked up at him. “Which is stupid, because, you know, it’s probably not even the size of a blueberry right now—just, like, a tiny blueberry that makes me wanna puke—”

Armin did laugh, then. When he tried to reassure her, it felt as though he was trying to reassure himself, thumb still sweeping over her knuckles. Mikasa almost didn’t register his words, gravitating back to focus on their linked hands. She dwelled on the warmth and pressure of his fingertips against her palm—on the tactile sensation eliciting tingles over her skin, and on the sweat sheening carefully between them. On how it made her feel. Some wordless feeling surged up in her, pinched tight in her chest, made it hard to swallow. 

“They won’t be alone, though,” he attempted to lighten her fears, adding with a soft laugh, “They’ll have it better than us.”

She squeezed his hand hard—didn’t let up even after she maybe should have, but felt like it was the only way she could vent this tight-chested feeling, this urge for closeness with him. And she knew when he said it, he was talking about their own parents, but her voice was soft when she admitted, “Sometimes I feel like we still have it pretty good.”

And there was a bittersweet gratefulness in not being alone yet, in having someone left... even if it was just one person.

Even if she wouldn’t say as much, something did twinge painfully in her chest to hear him talk as if he would still be there, come eight years’ time, come the rest of their child’s life. She wondered if it was for her sake—and he might be right to talk that way. She knew she didn’t want to be reminded.

Mikasa caught her eyes flickering over his face, lingering on the flaxen strands of hair framing his cheek—and it had been growing out again, but it was hard for her to tell if that was intentional, or if he’d merely forgotten to cut it. It suited him, either way. Her mind drifted as she soaked in the detail, the color, as if she wouldn’t have eight more years to do so. It was a little lighter than her father’s hair, she knew that… but it was hard to conjure an image of her father’s hair that wasn’t spattered with her mother’s blood. Hard to picture him at all, sometimes, in a way that wasn’t already still and cold, with a crimson flower unfurling in the center of his chest. She closed her eyes and shuddered. 

Mikasa realized that it had been well over a decade since either of them had had parents—and that was an obstacle in itself, when it came to knowing what on earth they were supposed to do—but that wasn’t all she worried about, when she thought about her parents.

Even if Armin had had a taste of it, this fear was only the tip of the iceberg. They were in Paradis—the one place that acted as a haven for Eldians, the one place that their child wouldn’t be scorned for that part of their identity—and they were likely to stay here. It was as close to home as they still had, after all. But even as a haven, Paradis wasn’t free of persecution—hadn’t always been a haven for everybody. 

Mikasa thought about how her father’s bloodline were hunted like dogs—a relic of the Fritz family’s desperation to preserve the order and illusion of the walled world, and one that likely wouldn’t haunt her anymore, but one that had nearly driven her family to extinction. 

She thought about how her mother and her were nearly captured and sold into slavery—shuddered in horror to imagine from the traffickers’ words, which still echoed through her mind even now, how many women and children in the walls with Hizuran blood had shared the same fate. Thought about how even if this was in her past, there was no way to hide this child away from the world, like her parents had tried and failed to do with her—not while she was the strongest soldier the army had, and not if it was made apparent that this was the child of the colossal titan. There weren’t any places here they could hide.

When she opened her eyes again, Armin’s thick brows were knotted in concern as he stared at her, drank in her expression. And even if he couldn’t know exactly what she was thinking, he could guess what she was feeling.

“There’s… just as much to be excited for as there is to worry about, right?” he tried. The hopeful glint in his eyes was familiar, nostalgic. She nodded along tentatively, grappling onto what he meant.

“Think about all the things they’ll get to see and do when they’re little that we didn’t do until now. I mean—think about that Hizuran festival you wrote me about, at the start of the warm season—you know, the one with all the flowering trees? And you said… that there were so many petals the rivers were pink—”

“The cherry blossoms,” Mikasa nodded in recollection.

“Right,” Armin nodded back happily. “Imagine how much that would’ve blown your mind as a kid.”

“It’d give them a runny nose, probably,” Mikasa crossed her arms, but she was smiling.

“Some things are worth a runny nose,” he smiled back.

“Or a sunburn,” she raised her brows teasingly, and Armin’s cheeks flushed a little sheepishly. “At least you kept your sun hat on. Your arms were so red in the pictures I thought something must have gone wrong when you developed them.”

Armin barked out a laugh at that, still looked somewhat bashful as he reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Ha, if only. I guarantee the ink didn’t even do it justice… You’re right though, it was worth it.”

He knew she was referencing the trip he’d taken to Onyankopon’s country at his offer, during his time spent traveling abroad. The other man’s company had been just as pleasant and eye-opening as the views—and even if Armin told himself he wasn’t there to discuss work, it was hard not to latch excitedly onto every new engineering venture Onyankopon eagerly proposed. He dwelled on the time with a fondness for just a passing moment. The end of Marleyan occupation in his homeland, among other territories, had been conditional in the treaty which ended the war, and Onyankopon had returned home to help in the ensuing reparations left to make in the instability of Marley’s wake. The blonde hoped that he would visit Paradis again soon, or that he himself could make another trip. Armin had garnered a heap of photographs for Mikasa from that visit in particular—especially from the few times he had gone out to see wildlife on the savannah.

“A part of me still can’t believe animals like that even exist,” her voice stirred him from his thoughts, and the expression on her face was mildly awestruck. “I know I can look at them anytime in the picture books now, but I’d always rather look at the photos you sent. I wouldn’t believe half of these creatures were real if you weren't in the pictures with them, too. It makes them feel real, at least.”

She gestured toward her bedside drawer loosely, but didn’t open it. Sheepishly murmured, with a suppressed smile, “I actually still look at them a lot. My favorite is the one where you’re in front of the big gray one.”

“Gray one… the rhinoceros?” he asked curiously, moving his hands to make horn shapes on the front of his face.

“Mm, no,” she shook her head, brows furrowed. “The ones with the big ears, and the long noses.”

“The elephants,” he breathed out in understanding, and she was quick to nod.

“Yeah, those.” Her voice was low and her expression was warm when she admitted, “...I’d love to see one of those, someday.”

“You can,” he smiled encouragingly. “Both of you can. We… all can, if you’d like.”

Mikasa was already bobbing her head in agreement, before he’d even finished the sentence—and she likely didn’t needed to be suaded any more, but he couldn’t help adding, in a thoughtful and pleased reverie, “The food is great there, too… Don’t even get me started on all the foods they’ll be lucky enough to try. I still can’t believe how many different kinds of fruit there are, in the world.”

“What if they’re picky?” Mikasa brought up suddenly, as if it had just occurred to her. Curling a pensive knuckle against her lips, she added, a little too direly, “What if they won’t try all the fruits we give them?”

“Hm… We, uh… we could give them a lot of different foods when they’re still small, so nothing’s too unfamiliar?” he asked more than proposed, voice rising a little on the last word.

Mikasa nodded at that, followed up with an inspired, “And we reward them for trying new things.”

Armin grinned back—fixated a little too long on the soft flush in her cheeks, abashed with her own enthusiasm—and shrugged, “Sounds foolproof to me.”

And Armin reminded her about the good things, like he always had.

It was an optimism she had never taken for granted, which had always been contagious. As children, every time he looked past that wall, he had seen the ocean, the molten liquid fire, the fields of ice. The beautiful pieces, even if they came at a cruel cost. Not a desolate and dangerous world empty of people. Not a hellscape outside of a cage.

And, once they had discovered a wealth of people beyond the walls, never a world full of enemies.

“I think I’m feeling better, actually,” she commented, raising the teacup out of her lap.

It was more than just the tea.

  


* * *

The tea, however, _did_ work better than either of them had even expected.

Aside from the deliberate decision to spend as little time as possible in the mess hall—which always reeked of something savory and hearty—and the avoidance of some rough drills, Mikasa more or less slipped back into her old routine.

Even if it alleviated most of the illness, however, it wasn’t a cure-all for the worst days—and this ended up being revealed to Armin by word of mouth before he witnessed it himself.

“Mikasa _is_ better, right?” Jean asked him one day, when the blonde was running his fingers over some blueprints, courtesy of Hange’s engineering team. The taller man looked deeply skeptical when Armin’s eyes flickered up to meet his.

“Hm? Yeah, of course,” he mumbled out, feeling confident with how she’d reassured him about the recent lack of incidents.

“...Because another one of the higher-ups told me she left in the middle of a tribunal yesterday and hurled into the decorative potted plant in the hallway.”

Armin _hadn’t_ known that—cleared his throat to backtrack, “Well, when I said ‘better’, I meant ‘recovering’. She doesn’t have the sickness anymore, but it’ll probably take her body a while to… uh… get used to digesting certain things again.”

Jean hummed in response—and something in his brandy-gold eyes was still reasonably suspicious, but if he doubted anything Armin said, he didn’t call him on it, instead peering over at the sketches laid out before him.

“Are these more designs for the iceburst stone weapons?” Jean mumbled, glancing across the table, and listened to Armin’s soft grunt of affirmation.

“Yeah… most of the designs for the weapons themselves are really basic, but the biggest obstacle everyone’s been having is how best to garner maximum efficiency from the stones. It’s a completely untapped energy source, not just here but globally, and so there’s no tried-and-true way to harness this energy yet.” Armin bit down thoughtfully on the end of his pencil. “But once we do, we’ll have military technology at least on par with the rest of the world, maybe better. Something to ward them off. Even if Miss Kiyomi didn’t end up doing much for us diplomacy-wise, we’re really indebted that she shared Zeke’s information with us.”

He leaned back in the chair, stretching—heard the wood creak as Jean settled a hand on the back of it and leaned his weight against it. “Think we’re paying off that debt pretty heftily with the shares that Hizuru’s getting of the iceburst stone. That’s good news about the weapons, though. Sounds like you’ll be obsolete in no time, huh?” he teased, smirk pulling at his lips.

Armin tried his best to smile back, but Jean’s face still fell a little when all he could manage was, “That’s the goal.”

He let Jean change the topic with ease, and they carried on about something else—because both of them knew what it meant for Armin’s role as the Colossal to still be essential. It might mean more harbors blown into rubble and ruin, belching smoke and smeared with soot, scorched corpses sprinkled among the stone. It might mean leaving this life the way Bertholdt had, skull bursting open with a crack and a splash between two molars, chewed slowly into a mess of splintered bone and viscera.

Instead Jean complained about how sore his ass was from days’ worth of horseback riding on an errand into the capital, and Armin was grateful for it.

His life had returned, more or less, to the same state of normalcy hers had—one that preceded what she had asked of him, that night. They had stopped the nightly liaisons once her nausea had begun—and he wasn’t remotely surprised, given how awful she must have felt—but they didn’t continue again after she had started feeling a little better. The flame which burned seamlessly in perpetuity was hard to strike from the flint again—if only because neither of them knew whether they _should_. Every once in a while, she would tilt her head in a way that felt familiar to him, spare him a glance that used to mean something—but it remained unspoken, and the gestures were small enough that he could’ve imagined them. He wasn’t sure if it was worse to hope he was imagining them, or hope he wasn’t.

And why wouldn’t he just be imagining it? They were both sure they had been successful, after all—a couple weeks late was one thing, a couple months late was another—and he convinced himself that maybe Mikasa had only kept inviting him before because there was still some uncertainty. It felt indulgent to entertain that it might be anything else—the same way, when his heart raced after their hands brushed together sometimes, it felt indulgent to wonder if hers did too.

He dreamed about her a couple of times over those weeks, in a way that left him aching when he woke up—and it was a lot harder to look her in the eyes after that than it had been when they were actually having sex, because he wasn’t _supposed_ to be dreaming about her. It was something he rarely did anything to satisfy either—and this lack of satiation felt starker after they’d gotten in the hard-to-kick habit of sleeping together just about every other day—but he didn’t always trust his mind not to wander if he did relieve himself of that tension. Knew that wherever and whoever it wandered to, he wouldn’t be happy with it afterwards.

With her symptoms scarce, and without the constant reminder of actively trying, sometimes it felt a little like it had all been a surreal fever dream. It was something so divorced from their daily lives, too—something hidden and separate from their work, from their friends, from everything mundane to them—something that they had only really acknowledged in secret, under the cover of night—that every once in a while, after a long day of training and organizing and conducting research meetings, Armin forgot that she was pregnant at all. 

At least until the day she followed him out to the lake at the edge of the grounds during their break.

She knew he went out there to read sometimes—figured he was on his way to do just that, based on the satchel he carried, hanging heavy with books. Mikasa caught up to him easily at the edge of the thicket of trees, when he broke away from the dirt path and ambled down the hill toward the water.

“Oh, hey,” he greeted her warmly, moving to sit on the log propped there and gesturing for her to join him. It didn’t look like the cut log had ended up here naturally, and she caught herself wondering if he had done it, or if he had just found it that way.

“There’s something I wanted to show you,” she murmured after she had sat down, facing the water, sounding a little breathless from excitement.

He smiled in anticipation—and that smile faltered in minor confusion when she started to undo her belt. He didn’t notice she’d been keeping it on a looser notch. Mikasa unclasped her pants and rucked her shirt up above her belly button and glanced down, night-black strands of hair falling into her eyes. Armin squinted at her stomach, toned and svelte as ever, as if he was trying to tell what exactly he was supposed to be looking at.

When his reaction wasn’t immediate, she shifted sideways so that he could see better—grasped his hand and brought it flush with her skin. “Feel here.”

Applying some pressure, she guided his hand down over her stomach—saw, once his hand pushed down over her lower belly, once he registered the shape of it curving back, how his eyes fluttered wide open and his lips parted in surprise.

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed—raised their hands up again, and swept them back down over the curve of her stomach—difficult to discern, but irrefutably there. Nervous excitement thrilling through him, he mumbled out his shock again, but with a smile starting to spread over his features, looking at her bright eyes.

Something dawned on him then. And he still hadn’t taken his hand off of her lower stomach, fingers lax against the soft, firm skin. “You might have to tell people, soon.”

She hummed in agreement. “Mm. I was thinking of waiting a few more weeks. I think I might… ask for leave, since some of the 3DMG drills are just gonna get more dangerous.”

Armin was quick to nod in encouragement. His eyes parted from hers just to sweep over her stomach once again, and he mumbled, sounding awed, “How—how long has it been? I mean, how long ago did we—?”

He didn’t finish the sentence—was genuinely curious about how far along she was—but noticed the pink flush, so light that it was nearly indiscernible, that rose in her cheeks when his voice tapered off.

“I think it’s been almost three months,” she murmured. “Since the, uh, the first time that we—”

Armin felt the heat rise in his cheeks as well. And all at once his fingers felt a little too hot pressed to her stomach—felt like maybe they didn’t belong there—but she didn’t lift her hand off of his. Swallowed hard.

“It—it won’t hurt it,” she blurted out.

“What?” Armin blinked back, voice a little unsteady.

“If you were worried about that… it won’t hurt it, you know, if we—if we still—”

Face burning as he realized what she was talking about and the implication set in, he gave her a dumbfounded look—and was _that_ why she thought he had stopped coming by?

And this misunderstanding was naught compared to the realization that she had still expected him to come by. That she still _wanted_ him to.

“Okay,” the word left him almost breathlessly, and he numbly nodded—and with how fast his mind was whirling, the sky may as well have been collapsing in on him. He supposed that it was harmless enough to let her think that had been his concern, since he doubted he could manage saying anything else—but he wasn’t sure where they went from there, either.

Both of them were red now, deep flush all the way up to their ears—and he could feel her heartbeat under his fingertips, blood coursing timid and quick—and there was undeniably something in how she looked at him now, something expectant and a little flustered. 

Tentatively, Armin lifted his other hand to her cheek. Some of these actions were so practiced by now that they did feel natural, even if every time they’d been practiced before they were never so rich with this feeling, this held-breath ambiguity. She nodded—and this was exactly what that expectant gaze meant.

The moment his mouth pressed carefully to hers, she all but melted into it, an eager sound already tight in her throat—and maybe those weeks after weeks of tension weren’t just imagined, on his part.

His hand slipped down to cradle the back of her neck as his lips curled over hers, as he sucked and nipped at them gently. She scooted closer, slipped a hand between them and smoothed it up his thigh, marveling at his sharp inhale when she squeezed—her grip tight with repressed impatience. Her shiny black hair poured through his fingers like an oil spill as he clutched the base of her skull, breaths mingling and mouths meshing, and her hand moved to the front of his pants—and it was only then that he seemed to notice that their hands had been drifting lower on her stomach, nearly to the hem of her underwear.

He broke away from the kiss, breathing ragged—hadn’t noticed how breathless it had become, and was desperate to get back to it, but he managed,“Wait— _now_? Like, here?” He whipped his head up anxiously toward the dirt path, only partially obscured by trees—swiveled it around the vast open area they were sitting in, albeit alone. “If someone comes by—”

“They won’t,” she shook her head, cheeks smattered with rose. And she sounded a little too certain to be believable.

Either way, he still let her guide his hand lower—and his hand was drifting almost mindlessly even after her hand had stopped, past her open fly and between her thighs. And his cock jumped hard the moment he felt how wet she already was—and he could feel the blood rushing south, could feel it swelling uncomfortably in the tight fabric. He knew she could feel it too, and he felt her wrap her hand around that thick hardness, press the heel of her palm into it with a squeeze, listening as he stuttered out a breath.

“It can be really quick,” she nodded to reassure him—her voice nearly strained with how bad she wanted it. “No one will notice.”

“...It’ll probably be really quick either way, actually,” he admitted in embarrassment, still red in the face, once he realized how quickly her hand alone was working him up after weeks of going without.

“See?” she pressed a kiss against his lips, breath hot against his mouth as she murmured. “Then it’s fine.”

Armin wasn’t sure that that was what that meant, but he wasn’t going to argue with her.

Qualms aside, he still felt his fingertips spread those soft lips apart, still let them dip into that wetness and stroke her, slick over the pearl of her clit—and he swallowed down the soft moan that broke against his tongue. Her fingers blindly grasped for his belt buckle as they kissed—hips rocking as his glistening wet fingers laved over her, rubbed in gentle circles. Then she was reaching into his underwear—slipping past dark gold curls, fingers curling over hot, hard flesh. Her clit throbbed from just feeling the weight and warmth of it in her palm, and she squeezed her thighs around his hand as she released a quivering breath. Slowly, she drew it out of his pants—stroked over the smooth skin from base to tip, brushing her fingers softly over the flushed head, and listened as his groans washed over her mouth—

A dull and heavy stampede caught their attention, boots clipping and thudding against dirt—and they broke free of the kiss just in time to see a group of new recruits from the training corps jogging in formation along the dirt path. And even if nothing was visible to the passing group, facing Armin and Mikasa’s backs, Armin’s heart still leapt into his throat. They exchanged a loaded glance.

“This is a really bad idea,” he was shaking his head, but he still slid down off the log and onto the grass—a little more out of sight, now that the thick trunk granted some coverage from above. And his heart was thudding loud enough in his chest to rattle his ribs—which would have given him pause, if his pulse wasn’t beating just as painfully hard between his legs—and he shuffled his pants lower down his hips.

“Yeah, it is,” she nodded as she crouched down next to him, also showing no intention of stopping, and pushed her pants and underwear down past her hips. They bunched at her knees, and she frowned when she realized the boots had to go first—and Armin’s brows knit in confusion when she started unfastening them.

“Mikasa, are you just… completely taking your pants off?”

“Yeah, why?” she mumbled, tugging off a boot.

“You don’t… have to, if you didn’t want to—” his words were murmured out in between glances over his shoulder. “You could keep them there, and lay on your back or something—” he craned up to look back at the dirt path, shoulders dropping in relief to see that the troupe from earlier was gone. 

“I wanna be able to move around,” she stated—finally shook them free from her ankles, and climbed into Armin’s lap. Pressed her wetness hot against the curve of his cock, his pants still bunched at his hips—relished in the sigh he released, rich with yearning. Felt it pulse, push up against her, hot and familiar. A familiarity and a comfort she was starved for.

“No one’s gonna see,” she whispered, rolling against him—felt his fingers curl into the soft flesh of her hips. Kissed him again. “If someone shows up I’ll just… get up and go into the lake, act like I had to pee.”

“That’s—mm—that’s actually not… that bad of an excuse,” he mumbled against her lips.

“Thanks, I’ve been practicing for Connie.”

He snorted when he felt her smile pressing softly against his.

And it was rushed and fast and hungry and exhilarated—and just as short-lived as Armin expected it to be, on his part, but she was quick to follow, trembling and dancing on his fingertips as she rode him even after his end, until she was shuddering like ripples through the lake.

And it was nice how it had been before, in clandestine quiet and soft apricot glow and stretched shadows on the wall—in dark rooms, where the selfish time they took was spun endlessly. But this was nice too, and open and fresh and clear, in crystalline sunshine and placid water. Horizons. No boundless time, but boundless space.

A room without walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is actually a bad excuse Armin, you're just horny. 😔
> 
> Nobody told Armin and Mikasa that you don’t have to kiss kiss fall in love to make a baby but let’s keep not telling them shhh
> 
> I just really wanna thank everyone who commented on the first chapter! ♡ I didn’t remotely expect this much positive feedback (and I’m so glad arumika is getting the love it deserves omg), and I can’t even express how much all of your kind words mean to me. Seriously, I re-read what you guys have to say until my eyes are fuzzy, and it makes me wanna cry every time. ♡
> 
> Speaking of this ship, arumika week is September 23rd-29th! Prompts were just recently released, and I thought I would let y’all know in case you wanted to make some content for them!
> 
> Until next time! See ya! ♡


End file.
